Wiederaufbauplanung und Heritage Making im kriegszerstörten Nürnberg. Historische Stadtkarten als Quelle der Stadtforschung

Abstract

A variety of thematic city maps from the 1940s and early 1950s provide new detailed insights into the physical transition during the reconstruction of German cities hit by World War Two. In Nuremberg, a particularly large stock of maps dating from before and after the bombings has been identified in the municipal archive. This paper explores detailed decisions planners made to integrate historical buildings into post-war Nuremberg. The detected map contents concentrate on damage documentation for built structures and their (art-)historical classification. By contextualizing thematic maps with Nuremberg’s planning history, we demonstrate their eminent role in the city’s post-war recovery process: City planning based directly and indirectly on war damage and heritage maps. They informed and guided post-war planning and reconstruction decisions. In Nuremberg, thematic city maps defined the criteria for post-war urban planning, thus pre-coding the post-war city. A mix of city planning and conservation measures re-created and simultaneously modernized the historic city centre. As the Nuremberg results indicate, thematic maps will provide further insights into the reconstruction and re-creation processes in future research.