Send message to Contributor

Contribution short abstract

This visual anthropology study asked how inhabitants of Halle-Neustadt—a former GDR "City of Chemical Workers”—reflect on Germany's wider social transformations. The resulting watercolours reveal diverse engagements with the region's past, present, and future, informing a "temporal landscape."

Contribution long abstract

Saturated with vivid colours, and narrated with a cheerful, didactic voice-over, the documentary film "Halle-Neustadt – Stadt der Chemiearbeiter" (1975, 23 min.), optimistically conveys how planned cities of the GDR manifest "sozialistischen Lebensweise" – a socialist way of life. Following German re-unification, the utopian vision of Halle-Neustadt, now assimilated into Halle (Saale), was disturbed by dramatic demographic decline, divestiture, and the rise of far-right ideology. Depopulation was partly offset by migration, and this panel-block neighbourhood came to house repatriated Germans from former socialist countries, people of Jewish descent from the former Soviet Union, and beginning with the long summer of migration in 2015, asylum seekers. The perceived ethnic heterogeneity of the neighbourhood has provoked ethnic tensions, reflected in 40-47% electoral support for the AfD, which platformed irredentist, anti-migrant policies in the 2025 German Federal election. Meanwhile, as part of the European Green Deal, a forward-looking policy marked by a narrative of climate neutrality and sustainability will see a phase-out of the coal industry by 2038. These policies are perceived as echoing the process of German re-unification, which repudiated socialist values and East German lifestyles. In this case, political resentment is epitomized in the planned Future Center for German Unity and European Transformation – graffiti decorating railroad tracks leading into the city reads, “your future will be our nightmare.” This study used watercolours as a research method to examine how Halle-Neustadt residents envisioned their role in the green transition, perceived through both physical landmarks, and as a temporal landscape that revealed people’s diverse ideas about their past, present, and future.