Germany’s Urban Frontiers: Nature and History on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century City

260 Pages·2020·5.345 MB·English

by  Kristin Poling

Germany’s Urban Frontiers

Germany’s
Urban
Frontiers
Nature and History on the Edge
of the Nineteenth-Century City
Kristin Poling
University of Pittsburgh Press
“Shantytowns and Pioneers beyond the City Wall: Berlin’s Urban Frontier in the
Nineteenth Century,” Central European History 47, no. 2 (2014): 245–74, reprinted
with permission from Cambridge University Press, copyright © Conference Group
for Central European History.
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2020, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4641-0
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4641-6
Cover photograph: Heinrich Zille. Wiese Vor Der Turnhalle Der Gemeindeschule,
Dahinter Knobelsdorffstraße / Ecke Danckelmannstraße, 1898. Silver gelatin print
photograph. Stadtmuseum Berlin.
Cover design: Joel W. Coggins
To my grandparents

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
1 Picturing the City
Urban Panoramas on the Leipzig Ring 15
2 Conquering the Wasteland
Oldenburg’s Urban Empire in the Northwestern Moors 44
3 Taxing the Urban Border
The Persistence of Prussian City Walls 78
4 The Shantytown Frontier
City Planning and Wild Settlement on Berlin’s Urban Periphery 110
5 Urban Histories and National Futures in the German Empire 144
Conclusion 172
Notes 177
Bibliography 207
Index 243

Acknowledgments
In writing this book I have incurred many debts. The University of
Michigan–Dearborn College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, the Minda
de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and
the Whiting Foundation all provided financial support for writing and re-
search travel at different stages. I am grateful to my many academic mentors,
foremost David Blackbourn, whose rigor, craftsmanship, and care provide a
model of academic excellence toward which I strive. Two German Studies As-
sociation panels bookended this book’s drafting and conception. In 2012 Eli
Rubin organized a productive panel that helped me think about the relation-
ship between the city, nature, and housing, which then produced a special
issue of Central European Studies in 2014. I am thankful for his support and
feedback, along with the other panel participants. In 2019 Paul Buchholz and
Alexander Philipps organized a panel on the idea of the commons in German
literature and history. I am grateful to them as well as the other participants
for their contributions to that panel and their feedback on my contribution,
which helped me think through my understanding of the wasteland commons.
Numerous librarians and archivists provided me with invaluable support
and information along the way. Conducting the research that eventually con-
tributed to this book, I worked at the Leipzig City Archive, the Lower Saxon
State Archive in Oldenburg, the Paderborn City Archive, the North Rhine–
Westphalia State Archive in Detmold, the Nuremberg City Library, the Ger-
man National Museum, the City Archive of Mainz, the Berlin State Archive,
and the Prussian State Archive in Berlin. Each provided both research sup-
port and pleasant places to work. Robert Wein at the Fotothek of the City Mu-
seum in Berlin was exceptionally helpful in identifying and providing images.
Writing a book while pregnant, nursing, and fully employed means making
heavy use of one’s local campus library and its interlibrary loan services. I am