This conference was the eighth in a series engaging with different aspects of the history of Eastern and Northern Europe. The series was launched in 1995, when the Tallinn City Archive, the Aue-Foundation (Helsinki), and the Academia Baltica (Lübeck) organised a conference on topics concerning the migration of the German-speaking population of the Baltic region. These institutions were also in charge of the event to be reviewed here, together with the Alfred Döblin Chair of East European

more »

... at the University of Szczecin which is held by Jörg Hackmann. The topic under discussion was the reconstruction and modernisation of historic city centres, first and foremost in spatial terms but also in other aspects associated with social and economic processes. The issues that were focused on concerned the connections between architecture, urban construction and the creation of identity; concepts of what is "national" and "local"; and processes of "modernisation" and "reconstruction" in post-war Europe, not only with regard to physical urban space but also mental space. The conference concentrated on post-World War II Europe yet included also papers that looked further both temporally and spatially. The common assumption that cities destroyed in the Second World War were modernised in Western Europe but rebuilt in Eastern Europe was shown to be a cliché contradic-