Warsaw: Devastation, Modernization, (Re-)privatization, dérive - Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Heft 72 (3/2018)

Juli — Sept 2018 

N o 72 

Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung 

dérive 

dérive 

WARSAW 

Devastation, Modernization, (Re-)privatization 

ISSN 1608-8131 

8 euro 

dérive

Editorial 

This special issue on Warsaw is the 72nd edition of dérive and 

the first with an editorial in English for 18 years (the German 

version is available on our website, derive.at). In addition to the 

editorial, all contributions to the focal point are in English. 

However, this does not mean that dérive will be available only in 

English in the future. The choice of language is due to the issue 

being produced in cooperation with the organizers of this year’s 

INURA conference in Warsaw, where the magazine will also 

be the conference reader. INURA (International Network for 

Urban Research and Action) is a network of international urban 

researchers and activists of which dérive has been a member 

for many years. Every year a conference takes place in a different 

city and is conceptualized and organized by the local INURA 

members. I would like to thank Kacper Pobłocki in particular 

for the great cooperation on the editorial work for this Warsaw 

issue. Kacper is not only responsible for the editorial concept, 

but was also – despite the time-consuming preparation for the 

conference – involved in the production of the issue from the 

initial idea to printing. 

Warsaw is a city that has experienced radical breaks in 

its development over the last century, which are still relevant and 

visible in many different ways today: the Nazi occupation, the 

crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the subsequent 

systematic and almost complete destruction of the city can 

hardly be surpassed in terms of cruel contempt for humanity. 

Several articles in the focal point refer to these events and their 

consequences, most directly a text by Bolesław Bierut from 

1955, which Irena Maryniak has translated – along with others 

– from Polish to English for this edition of dérive. 

The second major break in Warsaw’s recent urban history 

saw the shift from a state-socialist to capitalist system. 

Thereafter, the significance of property grew enormously and 

profit-oriented thinking made a decisive breakthrough, having a 

fatal effect on today’s housing market. This makes the ownership 

of many houses and properties a hotly contested topic, 

especially in connection with the (re-)privatization of property 

originally stolen by the Nazis. Of course, most of the buildings 

affected were destroyed at the end of World War II and, in many 

cases, the property claims pursued today have nothing to do 

with the original owners or their descendants. There are cases, 

for example, where the companies that had real estate confiscated 

by the National Socialists are revived simply in order to 

construct a claim for compensation. In the recent past, this topic 

has caused a stir in the media in Warsaw. Łukasz Drozda analyses 

the associated debate as played out in current publications. 

In an interview, activists of the Warsaw Tenants Association 

(WSL) report on the everyday and concrete effects of conflicts 

concerning the Warsaw housing market, which have repeatedly 

turned violent. 

In addition to the 1955 text by Bolesław Bierut, we have two 

further manifesto-like texts from other periods. The architects 

and urban planners Jan Chmielewski and Szymon Syrkus published 

Warsaw as a Functional City in 1934. Meanwhile, in 

2006, Bohdan Jałowiecki considered whether Warsaw is in danger 

of becoming a Third World city. Taken together, the three 

texts provide a range of reflections about the fate of Warsaw 

and its development through time, thus documenting various 

historical perspectives. 

Three interviews with urban activists complement these 

texts. In addition to the conversation with the WSL housing 

activists, dérive spoke to representatives of the Open Jazdów Initiative, 

an organization that is determined to save a very central 

park-like site, and the activities that have developed there, from 

valorisation. The third interview is about the highly active urban 

grassroots movement that has established itself in Polish cities. 

Chaos is a term widely used in discussions about the status 

of Warsaw. Joanna Kusiak focuses in her article on what the 

word chaos describes, how it is used, by whom and what it is 

meant to obfuscate. She traces an arc from Hegel to Harvey, 

from everyday experiences in Warsaw to the unbuilt Museum of 

Modern Art, and from a heterogeneous cityscape to neoliberal 

shock therapy. 

Kacper Pobłocki has not only written an introduction to 

the focal point. In his contribution Salon: Domestication of 

Warsaw’s Public Space, Pobłocki writes about the relationship of 

the capital to the rest of the country, about the dominant role of 

the gentry in urban (class) society and how they have inscribed 

themselves on Warsaw’s buildings (amounting to a literal 

gentryfication) and, to conclude, about the function and use of 

public and private space between salon and socialization. 

Finally, a look at the 9th urbanize! festival which will be hosted 

in two cities for the second time, combining theory, best practice 

and hands on workshops. urbanize! takes place in Berlin from 5 

to 14 October and is organized collectively by a broad alliance of 

Berlin’s urban movements and housing initiatives in cooperation 

with dérive. In Vienna urbanize! will take place from 24 to 28 

October at Nordbahnhalle, taking a close look at the scale of the 

neighborhood and its potential for citizens empowerment. 

Program details will be available from August on www.urbanize.at. 

You are welcome to join! Save the date(s)! 

Our crowdlending campaign is still running for the 

Viennese Habitat/Mietshäusersyndikat house project Bikes and 

Rails, where dérive is also involved. We recently surpassed the 

200,000 euro mark, which is a great success. But don’t worry, 

we need another 1.3 million euro. So you still have the opportunity 

to participate. Information is available at bikesandrails.org. 

Christoph Laimer 

01

Inhalt / Content 

01 

Editorial 

CHRISTOPH LAIMER 

Schwerpunkt / Focal Point 

04—05 

WARSAW – A Taciturn City 

KACPER POBŁOCKI 

06—10 

WILD reprivatization 

Property restitution in post-communist Warsaw 

ŁUKASZ DROZDA 

11—13 

It All Started with RAGE and ANGER 

SYRENA AND CAFÉ KRYZYS, 

LISA PUCHNER 

14—19 

SALON – Domestication of Warsaw’s Public Space 


20—24 

Creating spaces for free thought 

and FREE activities 

All about a once long-forgotten site 

in central Warsaw 

ANDRZEJ GÓRZ, WOJTEK MATEJKO, 

LISA PUCHNER 

25—32 

The Cunning of CHAOS and Its ORDERS 

A Taxonomy of Urban Chaos in Post-Socialist 

Warsaw and Beyond 

JOANNA KUSIAK 

Kunstinsert / Artistic Insert 

33—37 

Joanna Rajkowska 

Trees and Stumps 

38—39 

Urban grassroots movements in POLAND 

TYMON RADWAŃSKI, 

CHRISTOPH LAIMER 

40—45 

Manifesto 1 (1934): 

Warsaw as a FUNCTIONAL CITY 

JAN CHMIELEWSKI, 

SZYMON SYRKUS 

46—48 

MANIFESTO 2 (1955): 

CARE for the HUMAN person 

BOLESŁAW BIERUT 

49—54 

Manifesto 3 (2006): 

Is WARSAW becoming a city of the THIRD World? 

BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI 

Besprechungen / Reviews 

55—60 

Otto Wagner – zweimal zum Gedenken S.55 

Architektur in der Grauzone S.57 

Die Rückeroberung der Stadt – 

S. 58 

aber wo ist der politische Kampf? 

S. 59 

Alle, die hier sind, sind von hier 

68 

IMPRESSUM / IMPRINT 

– 

dérive – Radio für Stadtforschung 

Jeden 1. Dienstag im Monat von 

17.30 bis 18 Uhr in Wien auf ORANGE 94.0 

oder als Webstream http://o94.at/live. 

Sendungsarchiv: http://cba.fro.at/series/1235 

03


WARSAW — 

A Taciturn City 

Self-identity, historical trauma, 

Warsaw Uprising, geographical location, INURA conference, 

flâneur, urban research 

Alej Jerozolimskich (Jerusalem Street) 

Photo — Jan Gebert 

There are two types of cities. Some are talkative – they churn 

out one story after another. Denizens in New York City, Paris, 

Beirut or Tokyo, when asked about the city they live in, will 

openly and gladly tell you what makes their city special. Such 

narratives usually add up to a coherent picture of local urban 

identity. Warsaw belongs to the other group – that of taciturn 

cities. It does not have a predefined identity, and when asked 

about their city, Warsavians’ knee-jerk reaction is either to ask 

the outsider for their view or to change the subject. 

When it does speak up, Warsaw communicates through 

its walls. Coming from western Poland, when I first moved to 

Warsaw, I was shocked by the number of plaques commemorating 

national figures or acts of violence committed during World 

War II. The city’s veneer is coated with records of historical 

trauma. In this sense Warsaw is the very capital of what Timothy 

Snyder dubbed »bloodlands« – a vast territory »between 

Hitler and Stalin« that saw the murder of some 14 million people 

between 1933 and 1945. Reduced to ashes in 1944, 

Warsaw is one of the rare cases of a city that really started anew. 

But everybody remembers 1 August, when year after year in 

what is perhaps the most Varsovian of acts, the whole city stops 

for a minute to commemorate the 200,000 victims of the 

Warsaw Uprising. 

And then there is the urban fabric, which makes Warsaw 

so unusual that it does not resemble a proper city. It has no 

centre, or is in fact multicentric, with each small-scale centre 

being slightly off-centre. Back in the early 2000s, Warsaw 

was colloquially referred to as a concrete camping site. Krakow 

or Wrocław – centres with a more continuous urban history and 

with more charm –were considered proper cities. No wonder 

04 

dérive N o 72 — WARSAW. Devastation, Modernization, (Re-)privatization

one of the most famous music bands from Warsaw is the 

Warsaw Village Band. Yet, there is an order behind what seems 

like a random patchwork. In her essay reprinted in this issue 

of dérive, Joanna Kusiak shows how Warsaw’s urban fabric – 

elusive and nonintuitive at first glance – represents a palimpsest 

of many attempts to break with history. In this sense, Warsaw 

is a city that continuously starts anew. 

Warsaw is a city that continuously starts anew 

While the sense of looming history is indisputable and 

visible in the omnipresent fingerprints of the past, the city’s chaotic 

geography has become the fulcrum of possibility and 

change. As a consequence, one of the most quintessentially Warsavian 

debates has been on Warsaw’s actual geographical location. 

The three essays we reprint here as Retroactive Manifestos 

attest to the eerie sense of ambiguity as to where Warsaw actually 

is. In their Warszawa Funkcjonalna research manifesto from 

1934, Szymon Syrkus and Jan Chmielewski start their analysis 

from a bird’s-eye perspective, looking at the larger international 

flows and networks in which Warsaw is enmeshed. Their text 

comprises a number of consecutive analytical steps, which are 

also visually represented in the corresponding maps. We reprint 

only the first eight of those steps, but the final outcome – the 

Warszawa Funkcjonalna diagram – is the cartographic theory of 

what constitutes, to borrow David Harvey’s phrase, the »structured 

urban coherence« of Warsaw. 

Just ten years after Warszawa Funkcjonalna was published, 

Warsaw was destroyed and a new city erected in its place. 

Yet a comparison of a map of contemporary Warsaw with the 

Warszawa Funkcjonalna diagram shows that the city actually did 

grow according to the logic Syrkus and Chmielewski had predicted. 

The most traumatic of events – the Warsaw Uprising and 

the Nazis’ destruction of the city – did little in the way of altering 

Warsaw’s innate trajectory. The other two manifestos – 

excerpts from the 1951 book entitled The Six-year Plan for 

Warsaw’s Reconstruction and an essay by Bohdan Jałowiecki – 

also pose the geographical question. Jałowiecki, in a gesture 

that generated a heated debate back in 2006, argues that Warsaw 

is not becoming a dead ringer for a Western city but instead 

belongs to the family of cities from the Global South. These 

texts are separated by long decades and each is dedicated to a 

very different Warsaw. But if there is anything they have in 

common, then it is the sense of Warsaw being somehow out of 

step in terms of its geography, its actual location in the world 

at large. 

This geographical ambiguity is a source of discontents 

for inhabitants (and perhaps the reason why Warsaw does not 

have a clear-cut identity) but represents a great opportunity for 

urban researchers. This is why the current issue of dérive coincides 

with the 28th annual conference of the International Network 

for Urban Research and Action (INURA). The conference 

will be a week-long encounter between international and local 

urban scholars and activists, who will – together – try to think 

about Warsaw’ structured coherence and answer the question of 

what makes it unique as a city. 

Because of Warsaw’s reluctance to embrace an explicit 

urban self-identity, it has often been spoken about as a site 

where other, non-urban, processes unfold – such as a putative 

transition from state socialism to market capitalism. But what 

does labelling Warsaw a post-socialist city actually mean? 

Instead of defining Warsaw according to what it no longer is (a 

socialist city) or what, in theory, it is supposed to become (a 

poster child for market capitalism), we will delve into places and 

processes that define Warsaw’s contemporary mien. To this end, 

we will employ INURA’s unique conference format – talking 

about cities in the actual urban space and not inspecting Powerpoint 

slides in air-conditioned rooms. 

We will therefore study Warsaw from the bottom up and 

treat it as a theoretical clean slate. Thus, we will forget about 

jumbo theories and turn to elements of everyday life in Warsaw: 

housing, transit, labour, consumption, migration, its natures and 

its non-human denizens. It may turn out that, for example, the 

annus mirabilis of 1989 does not constitute a watershed in 

Warsaw’s trajectory after all. Instead, longer continuities may be 

at work, and more recent forces may have shaken the city to its 

core. On the one hand, Warszawa Funkcjonalna turned out to 

have been uncannily precise in defining the pattern of Warsaw’s 

spatial expansion, despite the dramatic intrusions that the city 

experienced. Conversely, Poland’s 2004 accession to the European 

Union ushered in flows of capital that engendered entirely 

new spaces as well as redefining some extant ones, substantially 

unsettling the city and altering its position in various networks 

(global, national). It may be the case that Warsaw is positioned 

in an entirely different place. 

We hope our peripatetic intellectual experiment and the 

encounter between local and international researchers will reinvigorate 

urban theory. Walking and thinking have always b 

een intertwined. Beginning with ancient philosophers, through 

Rousseau and Kierkegaard and from modernist flâneurs to 

urban ethnographers, many theories have originated from a surprise 

peripatetic discovery or a chance encounter. Recently, 

there has been plenty of jumbo-sized theorising about the 

urbanization of our planet, and we have a plethora of microstudies 

either describing certain places or dissecting specific 

urban issues. With a few exceptions (such as Filip de Boeck’s 

work on Kinshasa and Hidenobu Jinnai’s work on Tokyo), 

we are in dire need of research that shows how various fragments 

are, as de Boeck put it, sutured together. When Jinnai set off to 

walk the streets of Tokyo in the 1980s, he probably did not 

expect his peregrinations to allow him to discover a planning 

paradigm that had never been formally expressed but in fact 

explains precisely how his city came about and how it works. 

The point of departure for Jinnai’s discovery was walking. 

By the same token, a novel theory that stitches contemporary 

Warsaw together into a coherent whole may be just 

around the corner. We need only make our way there. 

Kacper Pobłocki is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and 

Urban Studies at the Warsaw University. He writes about 

class, space and uneven development. He used to be an urban 

activist and led the Alliance of Urban 

Movements that ran in 2014 in municipal elections in eleven 

Polish cities. In 2017 his book Kapitalizm 

historia krotkiego trwania (Spatial origins of capitalism 

the English edition forthcoming) came out. 

Kacper Poblocki — WARSAW. A Taciturn City 

05

ŁUKASZ DROZDA 

WILD 

reprivatization 

Property restitution in post-communist Warsaw 

Reprivatization, corruption, housing market, 

reconstruction, property restitution, claim dealers, 

tenant movement 

Tenants activist Jolanta Brzeska; 

»She died fighting for the right to live. The fight continues.« 

Photo — Mateusz Opasiński 

The phenomenon of wild reprivatization seems to pose one of the most 

serious challenges to urban policy in Poland. It affects thousands of 

properties and has become the subject of several books published in Poland 

since 2016. The majority of these publications focus on Warsaw. 

06 


ACTIVISTS FROM SYRENA AND CAFÉ KRYZYS INTERVIEWED BY LISA PUCHNER 

It ALL Started 

with RAGE and 

ANGER 

Housing, tenancy law, protest, 

recommunalization, 

eviction, privatization, tenants association, squat, 

self-organization 

Protest in front of the house of a tenant, who got kicked out of his flat 

and beaten: »struck by the invisible hand of the market.« 

1 

The interview was conducted 

in 2017, some current 

information has been added 

in square brackets by the 

interviewees. 

Syrena is an autonomous collective that is a headquarters for the Warsaw 

Tenants Association which focuses on housing struggles and tenants’ rights. 

Syrena is based in a reclaimed tenement building in Warsaw. The space functions 

as a place for non-commercial activities and support for local initiatives 

and inhabitants. The building is a typical case in the history of reprivatization 

– the procedure of transferring community-owned houses to so-called investors. 

It was a squat in March 2011, now it is inhabited by about 35 people 

and hosts several other organizations like the Warsaw Revolutionary Theatre, 

immigrant support and antifascist groups, a bike workshop, an anarchist 

library as well as the coffeehouse Café Kryzys. Lisa Puchner of dérive talked 1 

with activists from Syrena and Café Kryzys about their stories and the situation 

of tenants in Warsaw. 

Interview — It All Started with RAGE and ANGER 

11


SALON — 

Domestication 

of Warsaw’s Public Space 

St. Alexander Church, Plac Trzech Krzyży Square. 

Source: Warszawa stolica Polski, Społeczny Fundusz Odbudowy Stolicy, wyd. II, 

Warsaw 1949, p.36 

Capital, elite, gentrification, 

bourgeoisie, working class, Old Town, Warsaw, 

street life, salon, 

reconstruction, urbanization, socialization 

St. Alexander Church, Plac Trzech Krzyży Square, 2015; 

Photo — Bartosz Górka, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art 

14 


ANDRZEJ GÓRZ AND WOJTEK MATEJKO INTERVIEWED BY LISA PUCHNER 

Creating spaces 

for free thought 

and FREE activities 

All about a once long-forgotten site in central Warsaw 

Public Space, autonomy, sustainability, 

cooperation, housing, 

accessibility, privatization, valorization 

Photo — Adrian Grycuk 

Jazdów is a site to the south of Warsaw’s city centre where the initiative 

Open Jazdów offers a social, cultural and ecological public programme. It is 

well known for the small wooden houses (Finnish houses) erected there after 

World War II. For decades the area was all but forgotten by the city council, 

until about six years ago when it took the decision to dismantle the houses 

and destroy the surrounding gardens. Today the houses are still there. Lisa 

Puchner from dérive spoke to Andrzej Górz, who lives at the site, and Wojtek 

Matejko, who works there, about the history of the place, the threat of 

demolition and plans to rescue Jazdów and the Finnish houses and develop a 

non-commercial and autonomous space for the people of Warsaw. 

20 


JOANNA KUSIAK 

The Cunning 

of CHAOS 

and Its ORDERS 

A Taxonomy of Urban Chaos in Post-Socialist Warsaw and Beyond 

Chaos, order, Warsaw, neoliberalism, 

shock therapy, modernization, improvisation, DIY urbanism, 

Global South, post-socialism, 

everyday life, privatization, property 

The collage Warsaw ready for Euro 2012 created by a local artist after the decision 

to build a temporary McDonald’s on the lot originally designated for the Museum of Modern Art; 

Collage: Robert Danieluk 

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. 

It always defeats order, because it is better organized. 

Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times 

24 


Kunstinsert / Artistic Insert 

Joanna Rajkowska 

Trees and Stumps 

Joanna Rajkowska works in and with the public space, which she perceives as a highly political 

place where different forms of life meet. In 2002 she realized her most famous project in Warsaw 

– Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue. On her own initiative and inspired by a trip to Israel, she set 

up the 15-metre-high artificial palm tree on one of the city’s main roads, the Alej Jerozolimskich. 

It still stands there as an exotic foreign body that has become a point of identification and 

orientation in the city. Rajkowska selected two photos for dérive showing how the tree is cared for 

(again and again, the tree has to be provided with new bark), and related these to a current work 

of hers that constitutes a monument to the deforestation of Polish primeval forests. She writes 

about the photos: 

1) This is the date palm tree bark that we use to cover the trunk of the artificial palm tree in 

Warsaw (Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, 2002), the brightest and most joyful project of all my 

public works. It refers to the multicultural city that Warsaw once was, to its unbelievable vibe 

and energy. 

The bark is very expensive and we usually buy it in the United States. So we try to keep 

some of it spare and even recycle it sometimes. In 2014 we decided to spread the new bark on the 

roof of one of the buildings of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, allowing it to weather 

and better match the old bark. It was damn cold on that day but I really wanted to capture the wild 

look of it against the Warsaw cityscape. It was magic but my fingers got completely frozen and I 

only regained the feeling in the tips of my fingers months later. 

2) This is the trunk of the palm tree itself, under reconstruction. It is important to keep it looking 

alive. Apparently it is an important point of reference for many visitors, newcomers and refugees 

in Warsaw. They say it makes them feel at home. The palm tree is 15 meters high (including the 

crown), so we need scaffolding to do anything. Years ago, when the weather was good, we would 

usually have a couple of bottles of beer in secret, right under the palm tree leaves, high up. It was 

great and I remember the sensation of having real power over Jerusalem Avenue down below. 

Now, the regulations are so strict that we can’t do this any more. :( 

3) Times are very different now in comparison to 2002, when Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue 

came to life. This project (I shall not enter into your heaven, 2017) is a cry of desperation. It 

points to an uprooting, a cutting off, or a wrenching. I created a wall of 22 tree roots stacked in 

six columns. Not only is the right-wing government logging the ancient primeval forests in Poland, 

but we, as humans and citizens, are also going through a period of extensive uprooting. It is 

such a paradox that the more they are trying to root society in the national soil, the more uprooted 

I feel. It is reckless and painful. 

Joanna Rajkowski’s exhibition Suiciders at the TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art in Szczeczin 

(http://trafo.art) has just come to an end and is to be followed by a solo exhibition at l’étrangère in 

London in September and the Qalandiya International Biennale in Ramallah from 3 October 2018. 

rajkowska.com 

Andreas Fogarasi 

Joanna Rajkowska — Kunstinsert 

37

TYMON RADWAŃSKI INTERVIEWED BY CHRISTOPH LAIMER 

Urban grassroots 

movements 

in POLAND 

Activists from Ruchy Miejskie dla Warszawy (Urban Movement Coalition in Warsaw). 

Together they will run for this year’s local elections in Warsaw. 

In Polish cities fundamental problems have been growing for years, hindering 

their development and lowering the quality of life for inhabitants. That’s one 

of the reasons why Poland now has a strong urban social movement, and has 

had for several years. In numerous cities, groups that refer to the right to the 

city idea or have a municipal orientation are active and quite a few are also 

represented in local parliaments. To deepen cooperation between these 

grassroots initiatives, the Kongres Ruchów Miejskich (Congress of Urban 

Movements) was established in 2011. Several initiatives based on the interaction 

of various urban movements at the national level have already emerged. 

In 2013 Miasto Jest Nasze (The City is Ours) was founded in Warsaw and, 

in 2014, the party had already fielded candidates in the local elections. Tymon 

Radwański is an activist for Miasto Jest Nasze and one of the organizers of 

the forthcoming Fearless Cities Conference in Warsaw. Christoph Laimer from 

dérive asked him a few questions about the urban social movement in Poland 

and especially in Warsaw. 

38 


MANIFESTO 1 (1934): JAN CHMIELEWSKI, SZYMON SYRKUS 

Warsaw as a 

FUNCTIONAL 

CITY 

Urbanization, traffic, waterways, topography, 

transcontinental route, communication, transport, 

network, planning, architects 

Architects design buildings – which is to say that they compose the shape of 

the future. The discipline we have studied, the engineering skills and practical 

experience we have gained all demand to be perfected, but negative trends 

in the economy are having a significant effect on our profession. The potential 

productiveness of architects is not being exploited enough. Even those of 

us who are working to full capacity feel that the work we do is not fully satisfying. 

We face restrictions imposed on the building industry and technical 

constraints; our professional skills are being wasted. And all this is happening 

at a time when the need for construction is so strikingly apparent and the 

mass of the population is being adversely affected […] The reason for the 

constrictions imposed on our profession lies beyond the limits of our activities 

as architects: it is rooted in a failure to bring order to the forces that underlie 

the economy and society, and in the inappropriate way that goods are distributed 

once they have been produced […] Architects will find their place in 

the production process, as professionals, once the overall shape of production 

has been put in order. Only then will they be in a position to design 

cities, regions and indeed countries, while remaining fully aware of the ultimate 

end in sight. […] 

40 


MANIFESTO 2 (1955): BOLESŁAW BIERUT 

CARE for the 

HUMAN person 

population growth, Nazi occupation, 

warcrime, socialist architecture, social infrastructure 

46 


MANIFESTO 3 (2006): BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI 

Is WARSAW 

becoming a city 

of the THIRD World? 

Heritage, capital, housing, investor, 

public space, creative city, public transport, mobility, 

gated communities, star architecture, 

social infrastructure 

»The city is being developed by foreign investors in line with 

their interests: it is a steered, dependent form of urban expansion.« 

Photo — Wistula. 

A city reflects its residents. It also shares their fortunes. The present state of 

Poland’s capital, Warsaw, arises from the situation in the country as a whole. 

It mirrors a large but relatively undeveloped country on the periphery of 

Europe. Conditions in Poland have come to mean that Warsaw currently fails 

to match the most important metropolitan centres of the continent. Equally, 

however, a large influx of foreign investment and the arrival of subsidiaries of 

international corporations have helped launch the process of re-developing a 

city that was destroyed by war and then badly reconstructed according to 

socialist realist architectural models. A meeting of old and new lies behind the 

contrasts and imbalances in the city. Similar phenomena may be noted in 

countries of the Developing World. But are these contrasts diminishing, remaining 

stable or increasing? The following article attempts to offer an answer to 

this question. 

Bohdan Jal / owiecki — Is WARSAW becoming a city of the THIRD World? 

49

Besprechungen 

Otto Wagner – zweimal 

zum Gedenken 

Peter Leeb 

Der 100. Todestag Otto Wagners ist Anlass 

von Ausstellungen und Veranstaltungen, um 

den großen Architekten aus dem Hintergrund 

des Wiener Alltags in den Vordergrund 

der Reflexion zu bringen. Mehr als 

ein halbes Jahrhundert ist es bereits her, als 

das Werk, im damals noch als Historisches 

Museum der Stadt Wien bezeichneten Haus 

am Karlsplatz, zum ersten Mal überhaupt 

vertieft gezeigt worden ist. Seit damals 

rückte der (Wiener) Vater der Moderne vermehrt 

ins architektonische, aber auch ins 

touristische Bewusstsein. Hier sollen zwei 

Ausstellungen besprochen werden, eine im 

Wien Museum und eine im Museum für angewandte 

Kunst. 

Die aktuelle, unter dem schlichten Titel 

Otto Wagner, im Wien Museum von 

Andreas Nierhaus und Eva-Maria Orocz 

zusammengestellte Schau ist die bisher 

größte zum Gesamtwerk und gliedert dieses 

in chronologischer Ordnung. Im gesamten 

Obergeschoß des Hauses werden unzählige 

Zeichnungen und Modelle aber 

auch Möbel sowie persönliche Gegenstände 

– die Sammlung von Fotografien und 

Visitenkarten bekannter und berühmter ZeitgenossInnen 

lassen hier eine vergangene 

Welt wiedererstehen – in 12 Stationen dem 

Publikum vorgestellt. Die atemberaubende 

Qualität der Zeichnungen, die durch die unermüdlichen 

MitarbeiterInnen Otto Wagners 

entstanden sind, überzeugt auch uns noch 

durch deren Klarheit und Schönheit. Die 

Blätter waren natürlich nicht Selbstzweck, 

sondern gezielt eingesetzte Mittel zur 

Durchsetzung von Projekten, ob als Wettbewerbsbeitrag 

bzw. mit oder ohne spezifischem 

Auftrag. So zeigt sich Wagner als 

früher Meister der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Für 

uns ist es aufschlussreich, im Fall gebauter 

Wirklichkeit, das Verhältnis zwischen Projektion 

und Realisierung zu erkunden, ein Thema 

mit durchaus aktuellem Bezug. Es entbehrt 

nicht einer gewissen Ironie, dass die 

Idealentwurf des 22. Bezirks für die Studie »Die Grossstadt«, 1911, 

Otto Wagner, (c) Wien Museum 

Ausstellung genau an dem Ort stattfindet, 

für den Wagner ein neues Stadtmuseum als 

städtebauliche Rahmung des Karlsplatzes 

vorgesehen hatte und der derzeit auf seine 

Erweiterung in Form eines Aufbaus auf den 

Bestand wartet. Wagners überragende 

Könnerschaft wurde allerdings durch eine 

Bauaufgabe befördert, die in Art und Umfang 

ohne Beispiel war, nämlich der Gestaltung 

sämtlicher Bauten der neuen Wiener 

Stadtbahn. Seit dem Wettbewerbserfolg für 

den Wiener Generalregulierungsplan 1892 

war Wagners strategisch-moderner Zugang 

zu den Problemen der rasant wachsenden 

Großstadt bekannt. Ein Zugang, der bewusst 

im Gegensatz zu den romantischen 

Vorstellungen seines Zeitgenossen Camillo 

Sitte stand. Obwohl für Wagner die brachiale 

Methodik eines Baron Haussmann in 

Paris nicht in Frage kam – er versuchte Bestehendes 

weitgehend in seine Planung zu 

integrieren – stellt die bewusst gewählte 

horizontale Trassierung der Stadtbahn gegenüber 

der Wiener Hügellandschaft einen 

topografisch radikalen Schritt dar. Die Bogen- 

und Stationsbauwerke gelangen auf 

diese Weise zu deren unverwechselbaren 

lokalen Eigenart. Wagners Meisterschaft 

wird aber auch beim eigentlichen Benützen 

der Bauwerke deutlich: gibt es denn bequemere 

Stufen oder angenehmere Geländer 

und Handläufe? Die überaus klar organisierten 

Stationen, ob nun als Torbauten 

über Niveau geführter Geleise oder als Pavillons 

einer unterirdischen Trassenführung, 

werden bis zum heutigen Tag vom Publikum 

einmütig geschätzt wie kein anderes Infrastrukturprojekt 

der Stadt, die Donauinsel 

einmal ausgenommen. Sind auch einige 

Stationsbahnhöfe und beinahe auch eine 

ganze Brücke fortschrittsgläubiger Erneuerungsbestrebungen 

zum Opfer gefallen – 

der Kampf um genau jene markiert ein Umdenken 

in der hiesigen geschichtlichen 

Architekturrezeption. So ließ sich die Stadtbahn 

in das heutige U-Bahnnetz der Stadt 

integrieren und ist derart im Nachhinein zu 

einem herausragenden Beispiel zukunftsweisender 

Gestaltung geworden, das bei jeder 

gegenwärtigen Planung ernst genommen 

anstatt als selbstverständlich vorausgesetzt 

werden sollte. 

In der Ausstellung wird immer wieder die 

Modernität Otto Wagners betont. Was 

aber bedeutet diese? Wagner erkannte, 

dass der Historismus keine adäquaten Antworten 

auf die Fragen dynamischer Industrialisierung 

und den sich daraus ergebenden 

Veränderungen des Lebens bieten 

kann. Sein Vorschlag eines Nutzstils, der 

Besprechungen 

55

Bor 

Die Baugruppe Bikes and Rails errichtet das 1. Neubauprojekt im habiTAT, 

dem Mietshäuser-Syndikat in Österreich. Am Wiener Hauptbahnhof 

entsteht ein Passivhaus mit 18 Mietwohnungen, Flüchtlinge- 

Willkommen-WG, Gemeinschafts-Dachterrasse, Veranstaltungsraum, 

Radwerkstatt, Proberaum und Grätzel-Cafe. Das Haus wird der 

Verwertung am Immobilienmarkt entzogen und sichert selbstbestimmten 

und bezahlbaren Wohn-, Arbeits- und Kulturraum für viele Generationen. 

afü a 

Du kannst Erspartes als privaten Direktkredit mit frei wählbarer Laufzeit 

in unser Haus einlegen und unterstützt uns damit bei der Schaffung von 

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Interesse Dein Geld sozial, lokal und transparent 

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Infopaket anfordern unter www.bikesandrails.org. 

* Bk a * Öko * Sol * Uk *

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Schwerpunkte: Gürtelsanierung: Sicherheitsdiskurs, 

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dérive Nr. 69 (04/2017) Demokratie 

dérive Nr. 70 (01/2018) Detroit 

dérive Nr. 71 (01/2018) Bidonvilles & Bretteldörfer

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68 


»The phenomenon of wild 

reprivatization seems to 

pose one of the most 

serious challenges to 

urban policy in Poland.« 

Łukasz Drozda — Wild reprivatization, S. 12 

(Re-)privatization, urban movements, housing, eviction, 

transport axis, public space, destruction, chaos/order, neoliberalism, 

modernization, gentrification, 

reconstruction, property restitution

Warsaw: Devastation, Modernization, (Re-)privatization, dérive - Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Heft 72 (3/2018)

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