Reconstructing Nineteenth-Century Frankfurt: Time Travel in TimeRide and the Neue Altstadt

This article studies the politics of Frankfurt’s reconstruction, focusing on TimeRide, a company that offers virtual reality historical tours, and its relation to the city’s Neue Altstadt (New Old Town). By anchoring our study of TimeRide into the controversial urbanist reconstruction of the Neue Altstadt of Frankfurt, we adopt a site-specific and relational approach in our analysis of imaginaries of time travel. Both TimeRide and the New Old Town propose to travel into the past — back to a highly curated version of Frankfurt in the nineteenth century. Analysing how the production of cultural heritage in both the virtual and urban reconstruction project is intertwined with consumerism and travel, we address the state-corporate nexus in conceptualizing an exclusionary form of national identity. Delineating how the objects of study resonate with visual spectacles and cultural practices of the nineteenth century, especially in their promotion of mobility and immersion, we analyse contemporary investments into the (re)creation of Frankfurt’s history and foreground its epistemological and affective politics. We argue that these state-corporate investments into representing Frankfurt’s heritage aim to foster local and national sentiments of pride by activating a historical past which enables the reaffirmation of a selective identity of the present.