ABSTRACT
In the second half of the 1950s, the planning policy of the German Democratic Re-public (GDR) was criticised as economistic in the official journal of the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering Weimar (Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen). The founding of the first and only planning course in the GDR at the HAB Weimar in 1969 enabled the development of a collective critique of the state's real development and the prevailing spatial development policy from the 1970s on-wards. In the second half of the 1980s, this gave rise to a fundamental critique of the spatial development model, from which counter-proposals for a fundamental re-form of the political-administrative system soon emerged. In the meantime, entire departments of the GDR's Bauakademie were involved in this de facto reform wing, but until December 1989 its work was severely hindered by the state and party lead-ership. The proposals came too late to be included in the debates on reforming the GDR. But this process gives us a unique opportunity today to gain an insight into the tense relationship between the state and planning discipline and to experience a fundamental and comprehensive critique of the conditions in the GDR by its own experts.
