<h4>"Sketch of a Middle-European Highway Network"</h4>
Published in "Raumforschung und Raumordnung" - the monthly journal of the Reich's Society for Spatial Science, and the prestige venue for exhibiting the Reich's plans for the "East" - this sketch shows the proposed extension of the <em>Reichsautobahn</em> network into Central and Eastern Europe. The network was to stretch to Saint Petersburg and Moscow, to the Black See, to Istanbul, and all throughout the Balkan Peninsula to Athens. The network was to facilitate the German expansion to the new Eastern Lebensraum, making the <em>Reichsautobahn</em> an active agent of colonization.
<em>Raumforschung und Raumordnung</em>, V 3/4, 1940, p. 163
1940
<h4>Highway of Leisure</h4>
The <em>Reichsautobahn</em> was conceived as much more than an artery of movement: although intended for the exclusive use of the automobiles, its character and the space it created was to embody everything that one could find on the regular road - from social, economic, cultural or recreational activities. Or what is even more important, all the functions that one's Heimat would offer.
"Reichsautobahn". Directed by Hartmut Bitomsky, 1986
1930-1940
<h4>Straight versus Sinuous</h4>
<p>The intense dynamic between the engineers and the “landscape advocates” involved in the <em>Reichsautobahn design </em> is best illustrated in the debate on how the highways should be laid upon landscape. The engineers, following the logic of the railway, opted for laying the highway as a straight line, intermitted with a minimal number of short curves, irrespective of the vistas, landscape features or of the experience of the environment that the road creates. </p>
<p>On the other side, the “landscape advocates” had a different vision, more in tune with the environmentalist and <em>Heimatschutz </em>discourse. They proposed to lead the highway as a constant sinuous curve that would be defined precisely by the vistas and the landscape features, not always taking the shortest, safest, or the most economically sound route. The <em>straight</em> versus the <em>sinuous</em> became the subject of heated debates, with the <em>sinuous</em> winning in the end, at least on paper and in Reich’s intense propaganda of the project.<a title="" name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><br /></a></p>
<div> </div>
Seifert, Alwin, 1890-1972.
Seifert, Alwin. <em>Im Zeitalter des Lebendigen. Natur, Heimat, Technik.</em> <span>Planegg vor München, Müller, 1943</span>
1930-1940
<h4>The Arteries of the Reich</h4>
Planned at a construction pace of a thousand kilometers per year, the <em>Reichsautobahn</em>—or <em>Straßen Adolf Hitlers</em>—was to crisscross all of the Reich’s territory. Combined with intense motorization—exemplified in the concept of the <em>Volkswagen</em>, the national car—the new arteries of the Nazi state would transform the German society into a “Motorized <em>Volksgemeinschaft</em>.” The character of the new Reichsautobahn was seemingly distinct from that of the regular road. Regular roads were laid as reinforced lines of the landscape that would favor not only the circulation of several different kind of human or animal powered devices—as such forming a democratic realm of circulation—but also performed as sites of social, cultural, economic, and even recreational activities. <em>Autobahn</em>, on the other hand was seemingly only an conduit of high-speed locomotion. However, the <em>Reichsautobahn</em> was, quite conversely, a space that married all the modern attributes of speed an connectivity with the features of traditional roads: it was by itself a space of social, cultural, economic and recreational activities.
Wucher, Waldemar, ed. Fünf Jahre Arbeit an den Strassen Adolf Hitlers. Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1938
1938
Bucharest_Demolitions
Bucharest_Demolitions_Map
Domesticated Machine
"The automobile developed analogously to the bourgeois home, becoming a site for ‘dwelling within the car’ rather than ‘dwelling on the road’. [...] technical, safety and design increments added up to a cumulative change that was nothing short of revolutionary when considered in terms of its social consequences."
Koshar, R. “Driving Cultures and the Meaning of Roads: Some Comparative Examples,” in The
World Beyond the Windshield, eds. Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller (German
Historical Institute, Washington D.C./Ohio University Press, 2007), 14-35.
Reichsautobahn. Directed by Hartmut Bitomsky, 1986
1930-1940
Finding the German Heimat
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/127927782" frameborder="0" width="500" height="281"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/127927782">Finding the German Heimat</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user39927273">Igor Ekstajn</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
https://www.vimeo.com/127927782
Igor Ekstajn
1933-1941
Mapping the Turkmenistan-China Gas Pipeline
Fieldwork Map
This map displays the route of the Turkmenistan-China Gas Pipeline and identifies some of the major nodes (capital cities and managerial hubs) along the length of the pipeline. The chart in the bottom left-hand corner shows the dominant environmental landscapes through which the pipeline passes: desert, mountain, piedmont and steppe.
Xiaoxuan Lu and Justin Stern
February 2015
Regional Map
MD_Roads