Havana of the East, Sanssouci, or a city like a cybernetic machine – rebuilding Schwedt/Oder for the needs of the East German oil production was accompanied by visions inspired by cybernetics, dreams of automation, and a leisure society of the future. The proliferation of petroleum imagery existed in parallel to imageries of Schwedt as a garden city and wildlife sanctuary – all of those encompass the visual culture of the socialist Anthropocene. My research anchors political and collective imaginaries of a Socialist Petroculture in the cityscape of Schwedt and the history of its construction.

Renowned Bauhaus architects, including Selman Selmanagić and Richard Paulick, drafted plans for the city’s redesign and extension. Prominent artists were invited to participate in shaping a new aesthetic that would showcase Schwedt as the embodiment of “the city of the future”. Focusing on debates around aesthetics, my research demonstrates that the designs realized in Schwedt and the collective imaginaries attached to them were a process of negotiation. Despite architects’ and planners’ preoccupation with ‘programming’ socialist values into space, the designing of Schwedt entailed a struggle over creating a meaningful environment.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kenny Cupers
Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Doreen Mende

Lea studied History, Political Science, and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Freiburg and Warsaw. She graduated from the M.A. program in Critical Urbanisms. From 2020 to 2024, she was part of the SNF-funded research project “Decolonizing Socialism: Entangled Internationalism. An Intersectional Study of Cold War Projects from East Germany in Cinema and Cybernetics with Relevance for the 21st Century”, based at HEAD Genève.

Research Focus: Design Theory and Public Art in Socialist Modernity, the History and Architecture of Industrial Labor, and Place-making.

Book Project (forthcoming)

In collaboration with Ambre Elsa Alfredo and Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden:

Troubled Comradeship in the Arts: On Mozambican Artists’ Experiences in the GDR, their Works, and Political Imaginations (Leipzig: Spector Books).

Book Chapters

“Flowers of Solidarity,” in Unearthing Traces: Dismantling imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes, and the built environment, eds. Denise Bertschi, Julien Lafontaine Carboni, Nitin Bathla (Neuchâtel: EPFL Press, 2023), 213-221.

“Madjermans,” in What is Critical Urbanism? Urban Research as Pedagogy, eds. Manuel Herz, Kenny Cupers, Sophie Oldfield, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Emilio Distretti, Myriam Perret (Zürich: Park Books, 2022), 76-80.

Research-Video

“Mozambican painter Mankeu V. Mahumana and the GDR: artists’ friendships and cultural politics,” in Art in Networks: The GDR and its Global Relations (1949-1990) [online: https://artinnetworks.webspace.tu-dresden.de], March 2023.

Petro-Sozialismus und Stadtplanung: Schwedt/Oder als Modellstadt der “Wissenschaftlich-Technischen Revolution”, Seminar am Osteuropa-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, Nov. 14, 2024.

Pipeline Aesthetics: Negotiating Urban Futurity in Designing Schwedt/Oder 1959-1975, IRS Seminar, Leibniz-Institut für Raumbezogene Sozialforschung, Nov. 30, 2023.

Labor, Cybernetics, and Oil-run Dreams: A short history of the construction of the ‘City of the Future’ Schwedt/Oder, Conference Presentation at “Architecture at Work: Institutional Landscapes of Socialist Design and Construction”, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Sept. 14, 2022.

Cultural Diplomacy and the Arts. Alliances and Affective Relations Between Mozambique and East Germany at the End of the 1970s, Talk given at “Looking Forward, Looking Back - Artistic Itineraries Across African and German-Speaking Countries 1950-1980”, Universität Zürich, Dez. 12, 2021.

Herbstsemester 2021, 2022, and 2023

Critical Urbanism Introduction
Co-Teaching mit Prof. Dr. Kenny Cupers

Herbstsemester 2023

Real Estate City Basel: Researching the Financialization of Housing and Local Struggles for Housing Justice
Co-Teaching mit Dr. Jacob Geuder