Alexander C. T. Geppert, Fleeting cities: Imperial expositions in fin-de-siècle Europe

• Main Author: WILLIAMSON, Fiona
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: Eastern European Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/245; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1244/viewcontent/williamson_2015_alexander_c_t_geppert_fleeting_cities_imperial_expositions_in_fin_de_siecle_europe.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The classical exhibitions of fin-de-siècle Europe were a phenomenon unique to that age. Comprising astonishing feats of engineering, major investment and global participation, such exhibitions (or expositions) have been termed ‘laboratories of urban modernity’ (57) and ‘enterprises of national importance’ (202). Geppert’s ambitious and detailed comparative analysis of five protean exhibitions, or ‘cities within the city’ (221), staged in Berlin, London and Paris between 1896 and 1931, draws on the growing literature on space and place, and transnational and entangled networks. Exhibits such as native villages and historic city recreations, he explains, enabled visitors to pursue an imaginary journey through time and space (169), and the history of the exhibition site itself also reveals much about the medium’s complex relationship with the urban landscape. Geppert explores how exhibitions acted as a catalyst for urban development but also reads the landscape as a palimpsest. The Expositions Universelles (1855–1900), for example, shaped large sections of Paris’ city centre, reimagining an area previously associated with events including the fall of the Bastille as the Champs de Mars park. Likewise, the British Empire Exhibition (1924) was built over the site of ‘Watkin’s Folly’, erasing symbolically the failed attempt to construct a British rival to the Eiffel Tower.