A City Comes to Terms with a Physical Symbol of its Nazi Past
June 27, 2006
Nuremberg calls itself the "City of Peace and Human Rights" and an international human rights prize is awarded there every two years, in part to counteract its image as the Nazis' favorite city. Adolf Hitler once held his party gatherings in Nuremberg and had begun construction on a monumental convention site at the city limits before the Third Reich came crashing down at the end of World War Two.
After the war, the city leaders quietly took back the ruins of the medieval city and swept its Nazi connection under the rug. But by the 1980's it was no longer possible to simply turn a blind eye as far as Nuremberg's history was concerned.
Each year more than 100,000 visitors came to the massive meeting place where Hitler had once stirred hearts and promised greatness. Many of them wondered why there weren't any signs providing details on what had taken place there.
It wasn't until 1997 that Nuremberg's city council approved the construction of a documentation center on the Nazi convention site, which opened to the public on November 4, 2001.
Delusions of grandeur
"In our eyes, the German boy of the future must be slim and slender, agile as a greyhound, tough as leather and hard as steel." Those were the young men, described here by Hitler himself, who appeared at his Nazi conventions representing the future of the Third Reich.
In 1934 Hitler commissioned architect Albert Speer to design the Nuremberg convention site. It was to be an enormous, 11-square-kilometer (4.2-square-mile) compound with buildings reminiscent of antiquity -- the Führer's backdrop where he would make public his plans for the future and bathe in adoring applause.
The convention hall was to be used for Nazi party gatherings, while the "Luitpold Arena" was intended as a marching field for National Socialist obsequies. A "Great Street" for parades, 60 meters (197 feet) wide and 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) long, was another essential part of the regal architecture, as were the "Märzfeld" and the "German Stadium," which was to hold 400,000 spectators.
However, only the "Zeppelin Field" with a pompous speaker's platform in the style of the ancient Pergamon altar, was completed by the time the Nazi's "1,000-year Reich" collapsed in 1945 after a 12-year reign.
After the war, the people of Nuremberg had a problem: what to do with the remains of those delusions of grandeur?
Soccer stadium, runway, exhibition hall
"The Märzfeld was vacated and the eleven towers were detonated. The colonnades on Zeppelin Field were also detonated in 1967," said Hans-Christian Täubrich, director of the documentation center. "Some people wanted to turn the convention hall into a soccer stadium. The Americans were still using the Great Street as a landing strip for smaller aircraft in 1968. That shows, at least, that everyone tried to make the most of what was there."
The documentation center that Täubrich runs is now located in the former convention hall. After the war, the skeleton of this colossal building was used for a whole variety of purposes, he explained.
"The convention hall was really the only building worth brainstorming over. It was used for the German building exhibition in 1949 and, one year later, Nuremberg's 900th anniversary celebration took place there. But pretty soon it became clear that an unfinished building frame offered very limited possibilities."
Confronting the architectural legacy
In 1973 the structural remnants of the Nazi convention area were listed as a protected historical monument, but 12 more years would pass before the city of Nuremberg decided to install a small exhibition about the Third Reich on the former Zeppelin platform.
Still, tourists continued to search futilely for signs with historical information.
However, when investors finally did show up with a proposal to convert the convention grounds into a shopping center attached to a home for the elderly, the local authorities put their heads together to come up with a more appropriate plan for the area.
Eleven million euros ($13.8 million) later, its doors were opened in 2001. Both the federal and state government provided financial support for the center. The documentation center is now considered a milestone in the process of dealing with the Third Reich's architectural legacy.
Counterpoint in glass and steel
"There was a little contest, which the Austrian architect Günter Domenig won with a sensational design. He took this building, which is characterized by symmetry and right angles, and ran a 130-meter (427-foot) hallway diagonally through it," said Täubrich. "A modern study center was added on at the top with steel and glass. And an equally useful room for lectures and films was fit into the foyer."
Domenig's glass-and-steel concept was meant to contrast starkly with the Nazi's stony monumentality.
The documentation center itself is a multi-media facility centered around the permanent exhibit on National Socialism, entitled "Fascination and Violence." Plans, photographs, films and documents from the Nazi era are on display.
Symposia are also held at the center and presentations are given regularly on Nazi-related topics -- for example, on the role of film director Leni Riefenstahl ("Triumph of the Will") in the Third Reich.