Search

Our fascination with the ambivalences of ruin shows little sign of abating. Taking as its focus the Baltic resort of Prora, this paper explores the particular ambivalences that arise when the East German socialist past inhabits the ruins of the preceding National Socialist dictatorship. Developing a theoretical approach to the ruin as palimpsest and heterotopia, I examine three types of intervention that have been made in the post-socialist present at this largely derelict and disused site: redevelopment; musealization; and photographic representation. In each case I consider, first, the strategies that stabilize the ruin in the present and, second, the processes through which the ruin persists as a more troubling and destabilizing force. Ultimately, I argue that the ambivalences of these ruins of dictatorship are increasingly being simplified and consolidated in the post-dictatorship setting, often at the expense of the socialist phase of the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]