Strategies of the Temporary, Legitimation of the Permanent: The Consolidation of the Bonner Republik in Northern Rhine-Westphalia

Adress: Haus der Universität, Schadowplatz 14, 40212 Düsseldorf, Germany

Application deadline: 20.02.2022

The conference will focus on the “Bonner Republik” (i.e., post-war Germany before reunification, after which the West German capital was moved from Bonn to Berlin) as an historical period, as an incubator for the Federal Republic of Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia, and as a space of remembrance still being negotiated both in academia and in the public. In the historiography of the post-war era, it is common to refer to the seat of government and the federal capital Bonn as a provisional arrangement dictated by the post-war scarcity of undamaged buildings. In 1977, Der Spiegel described Bonn’s built environment as a “Provisorium in Permanenz”.

The tension between permanence and transitoriness indeed opens perspectives on the entire “Bonner Republik” as both a temporal and spatial phenomenon.

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Organised by: „Moderne im Rheinland“/Zentrum für Rheinlandforschung, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf in Cooperation with Forschungsverbund „Bonner Republik“ at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany

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