Zeitschichten

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How do cities remember? Which stories become visible in urban spaces – and which remain invisible? And how do we deal with places where different memories overlap or conflict with each other?

 

In 2022, Stadtallendorf, a medium-sized town in central Hesse with approximately 22,000 residents, was included in the federal program "National Urban Development Projects." The aim is to promote the preservation and enhancement of this historic site.

Today, Stadtallendorf is a distinctive industrial town, characterized by the diversity and international biographies of its residents. Its emergence after the Second World War dates back to the subsequent use of the previously military areas of the former municipality of Allendorf – in particular the site of Europe's largest explosives factories, Dynamit Nobel AG (DAG) and Westfälisch-Anhaltische Sprengstoff AG (WASAG) , where around 18,000 people were forced into forced labor between 1938 and 1945. Many relics of this era – bunkers, factory halls, factory buildings, railway tracks, guardhouses, and housing estates – have been preserved in the town to this day, some in their original condition, others remodeled. While these traces are visible in the urban space, they often remain uncommented and thus difficult to interpret in their historical context.

 

The focus of the funding program is the expansion of the Documentation and Information Center (DIZ – Memorial to Forced Labor in the Armaments Industry) and the development of a concept for so-called history routes, which are intended to make parts of the historical buildings of the former armaments sites accessible.

 

The planning project , "Urban Memoryscapes & Dissonant Inheritances - Concept Development for History Routes in Stadtallendorf," with students from the University of Kassel, focuses on these history routes and aims to develop a form of history communication for Stadtallendorf's public space. The project aims to understand local conflicts and controversies surrounding the interpretation and visibility of specific historical periods, and to incorporate both urban policy and memory policy perspectives into the concept development.