In the area of urban research and monument studies, attempts have been made in recent years to map the process of reconstruction. This seems all the more important since the building heritage of the years after 1945 has fully arrived in the focus of the preservation of historical buildings and the architectural discourse.
This atlas of war damage maps, edited by Carmen Enss and Birgit Knauer, presents for the first time an important source inventory for urban research, with large-format illustrations of maps of Nuremberg, Hamburg, Hanover, Freiburg, Leipzig, and Essen from the 1940s and 1950s. Introductory essays are concerned with the development of war damage recording and discuss the significance of map documents for reconstruction and heritage processes.
Thus, the book shows not only losses and destruction, but also the preservation of historically valuable buildings and structures and their evaluation in the reflection of the respective motives that were decisive for reconstruction. With some 60 large-format, historical city maps in color, important fundamentals are laid for studying the premises of reconstruction in the cities of Nuremberg, Hamburg, Hanover, Freiburg, Leipzig, and Essen. Thanks to English-language abstracts, this research will also be accessible to an international audience of experts.
Carmen Enss / Birgit Knauer: Atlas Kriegsschadenskarten. Stadtkartierung und Heritage Making im Wiederaufbau um 1945. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 2023, GERMAN, 264 pages, ill., ISBN: 9783035625004
Luigi Monzo 