ABSTRACT
The specters of two wars haunted Expo 58. The first World’s Fair since the 1939 New York show, the 1958 Universal and International Exposition in Brussels was intended to showcase the “more humane world” created after the unprecedented atrocities befell mankind during World War II. Yet, the idealistic picture of human progress came under the shadow of another, Cold War, which loomed large as the two superpowers and their satellites competed for prestige. The Atomium, Expo’s iconic centerpiece, was as much a symbol of optimistic faith in science as it was a fearsome reminder of the possibility of a nuclear war. In their national presentations many countries had to take this dual frame into account, none more so than West Germany, which simultaneously had to distance itself from its Nazi past and proclaim the difference from its socialist counterpart as the emerging consumer paradise firmly anchored in the North Atlantic alliance. 1
