#  Recovery Through Remediation: Landscape and Economic Transformation of the GDR’S “Energy District” 

 



   ![recovery_remediation_title_image_07.23.20_final.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum10471/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/hmui/files/recovery_remediation_title_image_07.23.20_final.jpg?itok=T2bm6T2R) 

 

**Recovery and Remediation** carries forward research begun in the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI) [*Urban Intermedia Project* ](/urban-intermedia-city-archive-narrative "Urban Intermedia: City, Archive, Narrative") and takes the investigation into the dynamics of urban transformation and intermedia practices in new directions.

The focus is the coal-mining region of Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz) which powered Berlin’s early 20th century industrialization, and after World War II enabled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to become energy self-sufficient. Today, Lower Lusatia is the site of a major remediation project, the plans for which were drawn up and partially realized by the GDR in the 1960s. That project is transforming the opencast lignite mining district into a lake district, and the larger region into a center of renewable energy production. As post-socialist Germany’s answer to the West’s Emscher Park – a cultural landscape celebrating the Ruhr Valley’s industrial history – the objectives of the Lusatian remediation project (which was also an IBA site in 2000-2010), go far beyond those of Emscher Park. They include both an economic recovery program built around renewable energy production and research-based industries, and a far-reaching ecological remediation program that includes (in addition to the new chain of lakes), an extensive public health and social welfare infrastructure.

Continuing the methods developed in the *Urban Intermedia\** project, the research examines Lusatia’s remediation and economic development historically (tracing it back to late 19th century Prussian decrees that mandated mine restoration by land owners) and carries forward on-site fieldwork and multimedia archival research begun in the context of the [HMUI Berlin research portal](/berlin).

This project is being developed by HMUI Co-Director, [Eve Blau](/people/eve-blau) and [Igor Ekštajn](/people/igor-ek%C5%A1tajn).