Buried city, unearthing Teufelsberg : Berlin and its geography of forgetting. / Benedict Anderson

Introduction Chapter 1. Ruins - Self-portraiture, Capturing ForgettingChapter 2. Forgetting - Self-anesthesia, Cultural Forgetting Chapter 3. Burial - Abandoning the City, Physical Forgetting Chapter 4. Disappearance - Planting the Forest, Natural Forgetting Chapter 5. New Ground - Unearthing Teufelsberg, Against ForgettingConclusion

Cities are built over the remnants of their past buried beneath their present. We build on what has been built before, whether over foundations formalising previous permanency or over the temporal occupations of ground. But what happens when you shift a city - when you dislodge its occupation of ground towards a new ground, bury it and forget it? Focusing on Berlin's destruction during World War II and its reconstruction after the end of the war, this book offers a rethinking of how the practices of destruction and burial combine to reform the city through geography and how burying a city is intricately tied to forgetting destruction, ruination and trauma. Created from 25 million cubic meters of rubble produced during World War Two, Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) is the exemplar of the destroyed city. Its critical journey is chronicled in combination with Berlin's seven other rubble hills, and their connections to constructing forgetting through burial.