Search

Since the 1970s, the existing historical building stock gained more value. Monument protection was gradually introduced in the urban planning process as were its methods and instruments. Approaches for an urban development based on the existing building stock were made in both former german countries, GDR (German Democratic Republic) and FGR (Federal Republic of Germany), even if the extent was different. Especially with the regeneration of the historical old towns in the GDR beginning in late 1989, early 1990, the preservation of urban architectural heritage formally became an integrated part of urban development strategies in united Germany. The adaption and development of instruments to protect and develop historical city centres is part of the research project 'Stadtwende', funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Surveys based on the results of qualitative expert interviews and archive research show that the 'turn' (Wende) in 1989 had an impact on the development of a planning practice that took the existing building stock into account. With regard to recent trends the paper shows the historical genesis of the preservation of urban heritage in urban planning and asks to what extent it could support a resource-saving urban development today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video retrieval methods, e.g., for visual concept classification, person recognition, and similarity search, are essential to perform fine-grained semantic search in large video archives. However, such retrieval methods often have to be adapted to the users' changing search requirements: which concepts or persons are frequently searched for, what research topics are currently important or will be relevant in the future? In this paper, we present VIVA, a software tool for building content-based video retrieval methods based on deep learning models. VIVA allows non-expert users to conduct visual information retrieval for concepts and persons in video archives and to add new people or concepts to the underlying deep learning models as new requirements arise. For this purpose, VIVA provides a novel semi-automatic data acquisition workflow including a web crawler, image similarity search, as well as review and user feedback components to reduce the time-consuming manual effort for collecting training samples. We present experimental retrieval results using VIVA for four use cases in the context of a historical video collection of the German Broadcasting Archive based on about 34,000 h of television recordings from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). We evaluate the performance of deep learning models built using VIVA for 91 GDR specific concepts and 98 personalities from the former GDR as well as the performance of the image and person similarity search approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forced integration of European socialist states following WWII is usually viewed as a history of political misunderstandings and genuine social failures. From the early modernism and avant-garde periods onwards, socialism was also a common experience for the whole of East and Central Europe. Since the late 1950s, the densifying network of relations among culture departments of socialist parties, culture ministries of individual countries, writer associations, publishers or literary journals has resulted in thus far unknown transnational literature circulation. This article analyzes the transnational links between the GDR literary system and the literatures and literary institutions of the European Eastern Bloc. The paper aims to discuss two specific research questions. First, the international literature published in the GDR is examined statistically and regarding the prevailing concepts and practices of transnationality. Second, the transnationally networked places of socialist literature planning are presented. Documents preserved in East German archives form the basis for the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Peet was the most important interlocutor between Britain and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Through his journal, Democratic German Report ( DGR), which he edited between 1952 and 1975, Peet had considerable influence among left-of-centre public opinion in Britain. His positive portrayal of the GDR was among the GDR's most believable and powerful propaganda in Britain. This articles reassesses Peet's decision to live and work in the GDR and his subsequent disillusionment with ‘really existing socialism’ in eastern Europe. Making use of Peet's personal papers and the archival holdings about Peet located in various German archives, the article presents Peet as a ‘liberal communist’ who was deeply influenced in his political choices by his experiences in inter-war Britain and by his fight against fascism in Spain. Although he came to dislike many things about the GDR, his loyalty to the ideals of communism always remained stronger than his desire to criticize the eastern European dictatorships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comma is the property of Liverpool University Press / Journals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents an analysis on the tensions between eyewitness and archival records. It explores the differences and similarities between the two and examines how memory plays as a common denominator between eyewitness narratives and archives. It presents archival argumentations regarding "Plato's Pharmacy," by Jacques Derrida and comments of Giorgio Agamben on the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. It also examines the archival characteristics in Stasi in Germany.