Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original papers to be presented at a special session at the 7. International Conference on Urban History in Athens-Piraeus in October 2004.

The section will explore urban life in times of extreme crisis. Beginning in 1940 with German attacks on cities in the Netherlands and in Great Britain as well as on Warsaw and Belgrade, aerial warfare became one of the most important and most intensely remembered features of the Second World War. Bombing destroyed cities all over Europe and just the threat of air raids affected virtually every single aspect of urban life. This experience of constant danger and of massive destruction remained unique to the inhabitants of towns and cities. For many cities aerial attacks became a turning-point in their history: large proportions of the population lost their dwellings, inner cities and historical buildings of symbolic importance such as churches were destroyed, many people fled to the countryside. The areas of ruins that they left behind often lacked in anything that had formerly defined a city. Rotterdam, Plymouth, Hamburg and Dresden are just some of the more prominent examples of this story.

Papers presented in this section should address the questions how urban societies coped with the extreme challenges of modern war during the years between 1940 and 1945 and how the various effects of aerial warfare were overcome when peace was finally restored again. Special emphasis should be given to the experience and notions of ordinary citizens. This is not done to assemble papers that try for historical "authenticity" by presenting as much evidence by victims of air raids as possible. The papers should rather aim to make experience itself the object of their analysis. To cite Joan Scott: "Experience in this definition then becomes not the origin of our explanation, not the authoritative (because seen or felt) evidence that grounds what is known, but rather that which we seek to explain, that about which knowledge is produced."

To address the urban experience of aerial warfare four aspects are of special interest. Each paper should deal with at least one of these aspects.

1. Destruction and the Problem of Housing

In many cases air raids left thousands of people within a city without dwelling (in Germany as much as hundreds of thousands were affected in some cities) - a situation that is normally only known by people living in extreme poverty. Quite often it took years before families could be reunited in self-contained dwellings. We want to know more about this brutal and sudden experience of pauperisation and about the debate on social need and private rights that was sparked off by the emergence of this new social rift within the societies at war. How did landlords and tenants in dwellings that were left untouched by the war react to the demands of homeless people? Were the concepts of private property and the private sphere affected by the sudden and unexpected increase in homelessness and poverty? Besides this, the effects of aerial warfare on urban social structures and hierarchies are to be scrutinised: Did evacuations and the ravages of extensive air raids result in changes in the patterns of social segregation in towns that were hit by bombing?

2. Identities and Public Morale

The experience of danger and destruction changed the perception of urban citizens in various ways. It affected not only how they looked at "their" city and at themselves, but also at local politicians, political institutions and at the national government. Regardless of the political system, identification with an attacked city seems in each case to have been strengthened among its inhabitants. People mourned the destruction of historic sites and they went to great length to help fellow citizens in need. However, the effects of aerial warfare on public morale in general are open to debate. At least in Germany, there seems to have been a growing gap between a boosted or at least unaffected morale at the level of everyday local life and a growing mistrust of the NSDAP and their representatives who were held responsible for the war and for the inefficiency of anti-aircraft defence. Was there a comparable loss of confidence in the national government in Great Britain during the "Battle of Britain" in 1940/41 when the events of night after night proved that the cabinet was unable to secure protection against German bombs? How strong and undisputed was the demand for retaliation by air raids among the British population once the RAF and the US Air Force reigned supreme over Germany? How did the fact that the Allied forces attacked not only German cities but also towns in countries they strove to liberate from the Nazi occupation affect the public image of the liberating forces (for example in Italy and France)?

3. Aerial Warfare and Local Administration

All over Europe aerial warfare created new tasks and problems in abundance for the public authorities. Various kinds of precautionary measures had to be administered, severe bombing created need for social help on an unprecedented scale - help that most of all had to come from municipal authorities, right at a moment when they too suffered from the ravages of war. It is therefore of great interest to know how the relation between local government and national political institutions changed in European countries during the war. Did municipal authorities enjoy a new freedom of manoeuvre in the situations of severe crisis that resulted from air raids or did the effects of aerial warfare on the contrary lead to an erosion of the power of local government? The latter seems to have been the case in Germany where the NSDAP deprived municipal civil servants of virtually all their power after 1942/43 despite the long German tradition of urban self-administration but it is unclear if a comparable process can be also observed in the occupied countries or in Great Britain, the only remaining democracy among the European nations at war.

4. The Politics of Reconstruction and Remembrance

It seems that in almost all cities affected by aerial warfare planning for reconstruction began already during or at least very shortly after the war. Was this just an effort in the interest of propaganda to keep up public morale or were these plans serious attempts to address the urgent problems of urban society? Did these plans draw on former projects of urban reform and renewal or did architects and social experts use the situation to develop completely new and formerly inconceivable programmes for modernisation? What rituals or symbols were developed to commemorate the city's destruction? What importance was given to the resurrection of historical buildings and who decided which parts of the destroyed inner cities were reconstructed in old forms and which were not? What does this aspect of the politics of reconstruction tell us about the different symbolic power of historic sites?

While the organizers welcome proposals for case-studies on specific cities, comparative papers that look at cities in different countries are especially encouraged. All papers should be pre circulated and participants should be prepared to give only a five to ten minutes presentation at the conference followed by discussion.

Please send a 100-200 word abstract and a one-page CV to the following address by September 30, 2003. The ideal means of submission is an email attachment in the Word for Windows or in the Rich Text format. Regular postal mailings are acceptable as well:

Prof. Dr. Karl Christian Führer
Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte
Schulterblatt 36
20357 Hamburg
fuehrer@fzh.uni-hamburg.de