Between War and collapse, reconstruction and democratization, urban sociology developed in Germany as a new branch of science.What drew sociologists to the urban environment? By what methods did they explore it? What role did Nazi heritage and the American »Reorientation« policy play?Using the example of Dortmund's Sozialforschungsstelle (social research unit), Ulrike Kändler analyzes conditions and practices of urban-sociological research in the early FRG. She portrays the city and society as different actors, such as Gunther Ipsen, Elizabeth Pfeil, and Hans Paul Bahrdt, and shines a light on the delicate translation services by which scientific change was carried out after 1945.