Research Area B Harbin (B10)

Project Leader: Frank Grüner
Project Members: Susanne Hohler, Rudolph Ng, Sören Urbansky, Xin Yuan

The project “Transgressing Spaces and Identities in Urban Arenas” focused on Harbin (Manchuria) as a global and multicultural city between 1898 and 1949. During this period Harbin, located in the northeast of China, became a city of different national, ethnic and cultural communities. It was above all a town of emigrants, forced or attracted to live in Harbin for different reasons: the construction of the railway by the Russians and the Chinese and the opening of Harbin to the international market that followed, or political circumstances – the situation in Russia before and after the revolution and the takeover of Manchuria by the Japanese, and finally the Holocaust against the Jews in Europe etc. The manifold encounters of these Asian and European population groups, concurrently with several changes of the political authorities, created a specific and extraordinary kind of urban global sphere in the city of Harbin.