Urban encounters with difference: the contact hypothesis and immigrant integration projects in eastern Berlin

Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary cities as promoting conviviality and intercultural sensibilities. The contact hypothesis and immigrant integration policies drawing on it similarly stress the importance of increased face-to-face contact for reducing inter-group prejudice and conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research in eastern Berlin, this paper examines spaces of encounters between local residents and recent immigrants and their potential for decreasing negative stereotypes, prejudice, and conflict. We find that contact between Russian Aussiedler and local German residents in public and quasi-public spaces remains fleeting, often reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes. Local immigrant integration projects, despite their intentions of increasing contact between migrant and non-migrant residents, often fail to provide opportunities for deeper contact. On the other hand, sustained and close encounters are enabled in spaces of neighborhood community centers, where immigrants and native residents work side-by-side on common projects. These sustained encounters engender more empathy and positive attitudes toward individual immigrants but these are not scaled up to the group, contradicting claims of recent contact theorists. We suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.     

Restoring Berlin's Unter den Linden: ideology,world view,place and space

Berlin's Unter den Linden, a primary thoroughfare and ensemble of historic architecture and nationally significant cultural institutions, lay in ruins at the close of the Second World War. The buildings, public spaces, and public art forming this street bore testimony to diverse facets of German history, presenting a range of semantic issues to those interested in their future. Differences in key groups' world view resulted in different interpretations of these spaces, thus different approaches to policy development with regard to their future. Initially, the German cultural elite was determined to restore significant architecture, asserting architectural value while avoiding mention of ‘Prussian’ or ‘German’ identity. However, the German communist leadership viewed these same structures as testimony to ‘Prussian–German militarism’ and sought their effacement. The Soviet Military Administration remained largely indifferent to all but spatial value until 1947, when they began to use architecture to represent the Soviet Union. Finally, with the founding of the German Democratic Republic and import of Soviet ‘socialist-realist’ urban theory, architecture considered progressive was restored as national cultural heritage, although sites with considerable ‘militaristic’ content prompted more debate over their future.     

Die Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin ‐ Bestand und Wandel einer gelehrten Gesellschaft Ein Überblick

The article deals with the foundation and development of the society Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin in the 18th and 19th centuries, its position as a privat society for natural history in Berlin, and its relation to Freemasonry. The paper shows the change of meaning of these society, especially after the foundation of the Berlin university in 1810.