Concrete Colony: Berlin-Marzahn, the Wende of 1989–90, and the Longue Dureé of the Mark

Begun in 1977, the massive housing project in Berlin-Marzahn was intended to mass-produce apartments for almost 400,000 people.  East Germans scrambled to get on waiting lists for the new apartments, highly sought after, and often left behind communities in neighborhoods and towns that had roots stretching back to the 19th century, if not much earlier.  They often had the sense of being pioneers, colonizing the open fields outside Berlin, and in the process creating a true socialist society on a tabula rasa.  And the process of moving to Marzahn created its own community, which was left without a rationale once the Wall fall—or so it seems, if Marzahn is viewed as a product only of the GDR.  But seen in the longer "dureé," Marzahn was only the latest in a long history of German attempts to solve the problems of urbanization by settling the flat lands east of Berlin (the "Mark" or "Marches").  In fact, colonization and settlement had been central to the history of Berlin and the "Mark" since the early middle ages.  How does this change of perspective alter our understanding of 1989/1990, 20 years on?