The architect Ulrich Brinkmann, editor of the magazine Bauwelt and author of several urban planning studies, presents Karl-Marx-Allee and the Hansaviertel as motifs on picture postcards from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Over decades, the architect and journalist Ulrich Brinkmann built up an extensive archive of postcards on architecture and urban development in Germany and Europe between 1949 and 1989. Based on this, he published several studies on urban development phenomena of post-war modernism, such as pedestrian zones ("Achtung vor dem Blumenkübel!", 2020) and housing estates ("Obacht an der Wäschespinne!", 2024) or on the infrastructure of the car-friendly city ("Vorsicht auf dem Wendehammer!", 2022; all: DOM Publishers).

As part of the exhibition "Duet of Modernism. Visions for Reconstruction in a Divided City", Brinkmann talks about historical postcards with motifs of the architectural-spatial phenomena of post-war housing construction, in the Hansaviertel and Karl-Marx-Allee as well as in East and West Germany as a whole. He places these views of the city from different decades in the history and development of the neighborhoods. Formerly located in two different cities and states, Hansaviertel and Karl-Marx-Allee are now located in one and the same district - Berlin-Mitte.