AA-2026-EC1D73
On the image
Two pedestrians cross a wide postwar boulevard in a West German city, the man carrying a leather briefcase with the purposeful stride of someone who believes the economic miracle is personally his responsibility. Behind them, a freshly rebuilt commercial district offers a snapshot of the Federal Republic's preferred self-image in the 1950s: the rubble cleared, the new curtain-glass facades installed, the yellow Deutsche Bundespost fixtures gleaming as proof that the postal service, at least, had survived intact. The Berliner Verein building — an insurance society, the name meaning precisely what it sounds like — sits in its new modernist shell, the kind of flat-roofed functionalist box that West German architects put up by the thousand in the 1950s as a quiet argument that the country had moved on. On the hillside behind, the surviving gabled houses of an older Germany look down on all of it without comment. The chain-link pedestrian barrier separating the walkers from the road is the era's characteristic solution to urban order: not a wall exactly, but a firm suggestion that people should know their designated path.
Visually related — by likeness
Berliner Verein Building and Postwar Street Scene, West Germany, 1950s. 1953–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-EC1D73. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/berliner-verein-building-and-postwar-street-scene-west-germany-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026EC1D73,
title = {Berliner Verein Building and Postwar Street Scene, West Germany, 1950s},
year = {1953–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-EC1D73},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/berliner-verein-building-and-postwar-street-scene-west-germany-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Berliner Verein Building and Postwar Street Scene, West Germany, 1950s PY - 1953–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-EC1D73 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/berliner-verein-building-and-postwar-street-scene-west-germany-1950s ER -
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