Diepensee. A Village Moves Elsewhere

Jörg Steinbach

Diepensee has disappeared. In 2005, the small town in Brandenburg with a little more than 300 residents had to make way for the expansion of Berlin-Schönefeld Airport. Today, the majority of the residents live in Neu-Diepensee, the newly established village near Königswusterhausen. Jörg Steinbach found Diepensee a ghost town in 2004, with barricaded windows and overgrown entryways. Each house tells its own story, and the question of its former occupants is an urgent one.
Before the village was demolished, the ‘re-settlers’ had a chance to integrate their visions into the planning of the new village. Today, they live in houses they have designed themselves that correspond to their previous living spaces. Is Neu-Diepensee an ideal place, conceived on paper and brought to life entirely in communion with its residents? What are people’s lives like ten years after the move? What wishes have become reality, and what memories have remained? As he did ten years ago, Jörg Steinbach records the structures of the new houses in black and white images. He has added portraits of the residents to his juxtaposition between old and new, while in text, interviews augment the clear pictorial language of a topography of change.