Urban Space and Post-war European Reconciliation and Reconstruction: Coventry and Kiel, 1945-75

Public lecture and drinks reception with Dr Christoph Laucht, Associate Professor of Modern History at Swansea University

Talk 16:00 to 17:00

Drinks reception 17:00 to 18:00

Open to all

Abstract

This presentation seeks to map out a new book project that addresses the role of urban space in European reconciliation and reconstruction after 1945. Building on recent work on the spatial dimensions of the welfare state (Guy Ortolano) and democratization in Western Europe after the Second World War (Martin Conway) as well as on work from geography and peace and conflict research, it focuses on the English city of Coventry and Kiel in West Germany as its case studies. The paper applies a comparative and transnational approach. It views reconstruction not only as the physical rebuilding of urban space but as a psychological project closely inter-connected with reconciliation. In the case of Kiel and Coventry, this involved the coming-to-terms with the National Socialist past.

The presentation will be divided into two main parts. First, it will address the role of these two cities as sites of reconciliation. Here, the focus will be on the crucial part that municipal officials, religious dignitaries, business leaders, university academics and other citizens of the two cities played in rekindling German-British relations as a bottom-up project, thereby making a massive contribution to European reconciliation. As will be shown, the emerging Cold War increasingly brought these civic efforts into conflict with the agendas of the British and West German governments.

The second main section will then discuss the place of urban space in the project of reconstruction. This part also considers continuities in town planning from the pre-war and war period to the post-war period.

Biography

Dr Christoph Laucht, FRHistS, FHEA, is Associate Professor of Modern History at Swansea University. He is a historian of post-1945 Western Europe, especially Germany and Britain.

His research interests lie in political, social and cultural history; historical peace and conflict research; transnational history; film, television and history; the Cold War; British-German relations; and, most recently, also the history of infrastructures. Laucht is the author of Elemental Germans: Klaus Fuchs, Rudolf Peierls and the Making of British Nuclear Culture, 1939-59 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

He is currently finishing his second book Uncertainty and the Nuclear Threat in Britain, 1979-85 and is co-writing a book on Voids in Global Politics.

Event format

The event will take place in person.

Simultaneous translation

The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Wenesday 24 April to request simultaneous translation.

Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

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