High-Wire Circus Artist
Heumarkt, Cologne, 1946
This unreal and impressive tightrope walk above the ruins of Cologne was a kind of street art and was a common phenomenon in post-war Germany. The theatres, cinemas, music halls and concert halls all lay in ruins – and this helped the people of Cologne, or at least temporarily forget their everyday suffering.
At the same time this photograph is haunting and shows the immense will to survive and courage in the face of catastrophic destruction and personal losses.
In 1945 architect and urban planner Rudolf Schwarz called Cologne the “world’s greatest heap of debris”. Schwarz designed the 1947 reconstruction master plan, which called for the construction of several new thoroughfares through the downtown area, especially the Nord-Süd-Fahrt (North-South-Drive). The plan took into consideration that even shortly after the war a large increase in automobile traffic could be anticipated.
Plans for new roads had already evolved to some extent under the Nazi administration, but construction became easier now that the majority of downtown lots were undeveloped.
The destruction of the famous twelve Romanesque churches, including St. Gereon’s Basilica, Great St. Martin, St. Maria im Kapitol and about a dozen others during World War II, meant a tremendous loss of cultural substance to the city. The rebuilding of these churches and other landmarks like the Gürzenich was not undisputed among leading architects and art historians at that time, but in most cases, civil intention prevailed.
The reconstruction lasted until the 1990s, when the Romanesque church of St. Kunibert was finished.
It took some time to rebuild the city. In 1959 the city’s population reached pre-war numbers again. Afterwards the city grew steadily, and in 1975 the number exceeded one million inhabitants for about a year. Since then, the number has stayed just below this.
1946: Picture
Today: Picture
