Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: The Many New Lives of Warsaw, London and Berlin - Instytut Pileckiego

Special event accompanying our exhibition "Warsaw Reborn. Reportage Photography 1945–1949" with Grzegorz Piątek, Professor Jerry White and Dr Benedikt Goebel.

Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: The Many New Lives of Warsaw, London and Berlin 

24.08, 18.15 | Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin | Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18a_rvmA-gX-ihYqCbfiOjhk9mDC...

Special event accompanying our exhibition, Warsaw Reborn. Reportage Photography 1945–1949, which was originally conceived and presented at the History Meeting House (DSH) in Warsaw.

This time, Grzegorz Piątek, Professor Jerry White and Dr Benedikt Goebel will explore one of the recurring dramas of urban history: the destruction of cities and the struggle to build them anew. Taking the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw, London and Berlin as their starting point, they will examine how cities respond to devastation and transformation, how societies negotiate between preservation and reinvention, and what rebuilding reveals about memory, identity and visions of the future.

Warsaw was Europe’s most devastated capital after the Second World War. Between 80 and 90 per cent of its city centre was reduced to rubble by Nazi Germany. At one point, only around 1,000 inhabitants remained in the city. And yet today, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most bustling and dynamic capitals, regularly attracting high levels of foreign direct investment, countless start-ups and, increasingly, not only tourists but also new residents from Western Europe. Today’s Warsaw offers a universal message of hope to cities that have been razed to the ground. It also embodies timeless questions and dilemmas about urban planning: Should a city demonstrate resilience by rebuilding and preserving the city of the past, or choose to create a new and vibrant future?

Although the scale and systematic nature of Warsaw’s destruction were exceptional, its fate reflects universal challenges. At this event, we will compare the rebuilding of Warsaw with that of two other cities that experienced destruction and profound transformation in the post-war period: London and Berlin.

London’s repeated experiences of destruction and reconstruction, from the Great Fire of 1666 to the Blitz, are deeply ingrained in the city’s identity and self-understanding. During the Second World War, around 116,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The scale of the destruction was not comparable to Warsaw’s, but London’s destruction and post-war rebuilding nonetheless formed part of the city’s long history of destruction, reconstruction and adaptation. Around 30 per cent of Berlin’s buildings were either completely destroyed or severely damaged during the Second World War. Again, the scale was not comparable to Warsaw’s, but the city’s subsequent historical fate was unique in other ways. After 1945, Berlin was divided into four occupation sectors and soon became a frontline city of the Cold War, split between two fundamentally opposed political and economic systems. Following German reunification in 1990, it faced the challenge of growing together and becoming a single city once again.

About the Panelists

Grzegorz Piątek

Grzegorz Piątek is a Polish writer, architecture critic and trained architect. He is one of Poland’s most prominent authors on architecture and urban history, with a particular focus on Warsaw and the relationships between architecture, politics and society. His best-known publications include Gdynia obiecana and Najlepsze miasto świata. Warszawa w odbudowie 1944–1949, an acclaimed study of Warsaw’s reconstruction after the Second World War. He has received numerous distinctions, including the Nike Readers’ Award. His publications have made an important contribution to public debates on urban development and cultures of remembrance in Poland.

Dr Benedikt Goebel

Dr Benedikt Goebel is a historian, urban researcher and exhibition curator specialising in the architectural and urban history of Berlin. His work focuses particularly on the transformation of Berlin’s historic centre during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on the relationship between architecture, urban planning, politics and historical memory. He has curated numerous exhibitions, including Berlins vergessene Mitte, Geraubte Mitte, Unvollendete Metropole and MACHT RAUM GEWALT. Through his research, exhibitions and public engagement, he combines academic expertise with the communication of urban history to a broader audience.

Professor Jerry White

Jerry White is a British historian and author specialising in the social and cultural history of London. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern London History at Birkbeck, University of London. His best-known books include London in the Twentieth Century, London in the Eighteenth Century and The Battle of London 1939–45, in which he explores the history of the British capital from a social-historical perspective. His works are widely regarded as major contributions to the history of London and have received numerous distinctions, including the Wolfson History Prize.

Cities are far more than collections of streets, buildings and squares. They are repositories of collective memory, settings for political developments and expressions of social identities. Their architecture reflects historical upheavals, cultural values, economic transformations and the hopes of their inhabitants. When a city is destroyed, therefore, far more is lost than its physical fabric. Familiar living environments, social networks and places where history can be seen and experienced disappear along with it. Rebuilding a city is consequently never a purely technical or architectural task—it is always also an engagement with the past and a decision about the kind of future that should emerge.

The Second World War left behind an unprecedented degree of destruction across Europe. Numerous cities were severely damaged or almost completely obliterated by air raids, sieges and systematic devastation. Yet although many European metropolises faced similar challenges, they developed very different strategies for dealing with the consequences of the war. The question was not simply how buildings could be erected again, but what story a city should tell in the future. Should what had been lost be reconstructed? Should the destruction remain visible? Or did the new beginning offer an opportunity to create an entirely new city?

Warsaw, London and Berlin exemplify three different responses to these questions. All three capitals were severely affected by the war, albeit to vastly different degrees, and their political, social and cultural circumstances differed fundamentally. It is precisely these differences that make the comparison so revealing.

For Warsaw, the end of the war meant the almost complete loss of the historic city. Following the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, large parts of the city were systematically destroyed. Reconstruction became an act of national self-assertion. The rebuilding of the Old Town on the basis of historical paintings, plans and photographs was far more than a heritage conservation project. It was intended to make the continuity of Polish history visible and to demonstrate that the city—and with it the nation—had endured despite the destruction. At the same time, a new Warsaw emerged under communist rule, with broad thoroughfares, monumental buildings and modern residential districts. The city was thus both reconstructed and reinvented.

London suffered extensive destruction during the Blitz, but remained operational as the political and social capital of the United Kingdom. Unlike Warsaw, London did not have to re-establish its legitimacy or restore its national identity. Its reconstruction was therefore shaped less by historical reconstruction than by modernization. Historic buildings were restored, while new residential districts, infrastructure projects and modern urban landscapes were created. The wartime destruction became the starting point for a long-term process of urban renewal, without fundamentally interrupting the city’s historical development. London therefore represents continuity, adaptability and the ability to understand change as part of its history.

Berlin occupied a unique position among European capitals. The city was not only severely damaged but also became a focal point of the Cold War after 1945. Its division into East and West meant that two different political systems were also reflected in the urban landscape. While East Berlin was designed as a socialist capital with representative boulevards and monumental buildings, West Berlin developed into a Western-oriented metropolis with its own architectural and urban-planning principles. German reunification ultimately initiated another profound process of transformation, during which Berlin once again had to grow together as a shared capital. Hardly any other European city demonstrates so vividly how closely urban development and political history are intertwined.

The comparison of these three cities makes clear that reconstruction never simply means returning to an earlier state. Each generation decides anew which aspects of the past should be preserved, which ruptures should remain visible and which visions for the future should be realized. Cities are therefore formed not only from stone and concrete, but also from memory, political decisions and processes of social negotiation. They carry within them both the traces of their history and the ideas of the people who continually reshape them.