Warum Hannover heute so hässlich ist: Der Skandal der autogerechten Stadt

Why Hanover is so ugly today: The scandal of the car-centric city Before the war, Hanover boasted one of the most magnificent old towns in Northern Germany—a sprawling labyrinth of half-timbered houses, narrow lanes, and centuries-old buildings that embodied the history of a proud city-state in stone and wood. The bombs of World War II destroyed much of it, but not all. What the Allied air raids had spared, what was still standing, what could still have been saved—that did not survive the peace. For what befell Hanover in the decades after 1945 was not a natural disaster. It was a decision. City planner Rudolf Hillebrecht became a celebrated visionary in the 1950s because he did what others dared not: He had what remained demolished, blasted historic districts to rubble, and drove wide, multi-lane urban highways right through the heart of Hanover. The car-centric city was his credo, the smooth flow of traffic his highest priority. While experts praised him and architecture magazines celebrated him, layer by layer, what had once made Hanover unique disappeared—sacrificed not by bombs, but by bulldozers in the name of progress. This is the story of a city destroyed twice—once by war and once by its own urban planning—and which today must live with the legacy of this brutalist vision. It is the story of a man who was hailed as a savior and in reality completed what the Luftwaffe had begun, and what that reveals about postwar society, its obsession with the automobile, and its cavalier treatment of existing urban spaces.