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| german architecture |
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| Top Ten Nazi Architecture |
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| top ten Berlin architecture |
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part of the essential architecture network |
| Top Ten Essential Architecture | top ten Nazi architecture | |||||||||||||
| 1 | Hitler's Chancellery, (Kanzlei des Führers, Reichskanzlei), Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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From Wilhelmsplatz an arriving diplomat drove through great gates into a court of honour. By way of an outside staircase he first entered a medium-sized reception room from which double doors almost seventeen feet high opened into a large hall clad in mosaic. He then ascended several steps, passed through a round room with domed ceiling, and saw before him a gallery 480 feet long. Hitler was particularly impressed by my gallery because it was twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Hitler was delighted: "On the long walk from the entrance to the reception hall they'll get a taste of the power and grandeur of the German Reich!" During the next several months he asked to see the plans again and again but interfered remarkably little in this building, even though it was designed for him personally. He let me work freely. |
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| 2 | Zeppelinfeld, Nuremburg Party Rally Grounds (Reichsparteitagsgelaende Zeppelinfeld Tribuene), Nuremburg. | |||||||||||||
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Nazi party rally grounds (in German Reichsparteitagsgelände) is the name of a site in the southeast of Nuremberg (UGN: 49.43° N 11.12° E), where the Nazi party rallies were held from 1933 until 1938. It includes the Congress Hall, the Zeppelin Field, the Märzfeld (March Field), the Deutsche Stadion (German stadium), the former Stadion der Hitlerjugend ("stadium of the Hitler Youth", today Frankenstadion) and the Große Straße ("great road"). The party grounds were planned by Hitler's first architect Albert Speer (except of the Congress hall, which was planned by Ludwig and Franz Ruff). |
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| 3 | Nürnberger Kongreßhalle (Congress Hall), Nuremburg Party Rally Grounds, Nuremburg. | |||||||||||||
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Hitler conferred upon Nuremberg the title, "City of the Party Rallies" for mainly pragmatic reasons. Up to one million Party members would travel to Nuremberg for the week-long rallies, completely swamping the city, and the city, situated in the centre of Germany was easily accessible. Hitler also wanted to appropriate the city's history for the glorification of the Nazi party. A large auditorium was needed for this once a year event and so Hitler comissioned the Congress Hall. The Hall was designed to hold over 50,000 people, but was never finished. The horseshoe-shaped building covers a total area of about 300 x 300 metres. The scale of this structure is overwhelming with an immense arcade running around the lower level of the u-shaped structure. The arcade only serves to dwarf the visitor and make them feel more insignificant in the face of the Nazi system. The monumentality of the building is increased by the simplicity of the oversized architectural detailing. |
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| 4 | Deutsches Stadion Nuremburg (unrealised). | |||||||||||||
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Deutsches Stadion was designed by Albert Speer for the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and according to Speer himself, inspired not by the Circus Maximus but by the Panathenaic Stadium, which had impressed him so much when he visited Athens in 1935 (Speer, Erinnerungen, 75). |
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| 5 | Air Ministry building (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) on Wilhelmstraße, Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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The Reich Air Ministry (German: Reichsluftfahrtministerium) was a government department during the period of Nazi Germany (1933-45). It is also the original name of a building in Wilhelmstraße in central Berlin, the capital of Germany, which now houses the German Finance Ministry. The Air Ministry was in charge of development and production of aircraft, primarily for the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe). As was characteristic of government departments in the Nazi era, the Ministry was personality driven and formal procedure was often ignored in favour of the whims of the Minister, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946). As a result, development progressed only slowly and erratically during the war. |
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| 6 | Ministry of Propaganda, Wilhelmstraße, Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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Currently serving as the German Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security, this is where Goebbels was in charge of cultural institutions, publishing, art, theatre, music, press, radio, and all other media. |
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| 7 | Tempelhof Airport, Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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The airport halls and the neighboring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "world capital" Germania, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet has a charmingly intimate feel; planes can taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walk through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. Tempelhof is served conveniently by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station). |
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| 8 | Wehrmacht headquarters, Bendlerstraße, Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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Wehrmacht headquarters on Bendlerstraße was where Army officers who opposed Hitler planned the attempt on his life on 20 July 1944. After the attempt failed, the leaders were rounded up and shot in the courtyard of this building; among these was Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, who had planted the bomb. Today the building houses the Memorial and Museum of the German Resistance. The street has been renamed Stauffenbergstraße. (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand) |
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| 9 | Volkshalle, Berlin (unrealised). | |||||||||||||
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In an interview with James P. O'Donnell, Speer said that, during his time in Spandau Prison, he constantly reviewed such criticisms of his architecture, and eliminated (in his opinion) many of them. One problem, however, remained - Speer speculated that during cold weather, the breathing and perspiration of 180,000 occupants in such a large and high dome might precipitate and fall back down. In short, it was possible that the hall might have its own 'weather' and create indoor rain because of its overcapacity, a characteristic that was also believed to be possible for the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building, and has been observed to occur on a minor scale (with light mist as the precipitation, on high humidity days) inside the Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio. |
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| 10 | Welthauptstadt Germania, Berlin (unrealised). | |||||||||||||
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Welthauptstadt ("World Capital") Germania was the name Adolf Hitler gave to the projected renewal of the German capital Berlin, part of his vision for the future of Germany after the planned victory in World War II. Albert Speer, "the first architect of the Third Reich", produced many of the plans for the rebuilt city, only a small portion of which was realized before World War II. |
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| 11 | Ordensburg Sonthofen, Bavaria. | |||||||||||||
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The estate was built in 1934 as NS-Ordensburg Sonthofen by the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) for the NSDAP. It was planned by architect Hermann Giesler. It served as Adolf-Hitler-School for the education of party cadres. In the last year of the war it was used as sickbay. Commander of the Ordensburg was the Reichstag debuty Robert Bauer (NSDAP) from 1936 to 1941. After the war at first French troops acquired the Castle. Later the US Army created a the central educational place of the task force US-Constabulary there. In 1956 the Castle was acquired by the Bundeswehr and was named after the member of resistance and former chief of the general staff of the army General Ludwig Beck. |
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| 12 | German autobahns, Germany. | |||||||||||||
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The autobahn freeway system quickly became a symbol of Nazi Germany. Its construction was seen as a major element of Germany's economic resurgence under Hitler, and was compared with the projects of Roosevelt's New Deal. |
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| 13 | Flakturm (Flack towers), Germany. | |||||||||||||
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Flak towers (German: Flaktürme) were large anti-aircraft gun blockhouses used by the Luftwaffe to prevent overflights of key areas in certain cities in World War II. They also served as air-raid shelters for tens of thousands of people and to coordinate air defence. With concrete walls up to 3.5 metres thick, these towers were considered to be invulnerable to attack with the usual ordnance carried by Allied bombers, though it is unlikely that they would have withstood Grand Slam bombs which successfully penetrated much thicker reinforced concrete. Aircraft generally appeared to have avoided the flak towers. |
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| 14 | Olympic Stadium, Berlin. | |||||||||||||
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The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, were held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin's bid was preferred over Barcelona by the IOC in April, 1931. Although awarded before the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, the government saw the Olympics as a golden opportunity to promote their Nazi ideology. Film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, a favorite of Hitler, was commissioned to film the Games. The film, titled Olympia, was arguably a piece of propaganda, but originated many of the techniques now commonplace to the filming of sports. The Berlin Olympics also saw the introduction to the ceremonies of the Olympic Torch bringing the Olympic Flame by relay from Olympia. Germany's domination of the games was the rule, although there were exceptions to their domination in the likes of persons such as Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. |
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| 15 | Prora | |||||||||||||
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Prora was a Nazi-planned spa on the island Rügen, Germany. The massive building complex was built between 1936 and 1939 as a Kraft durch Freude (KdF) project. The eight buildings are identical, and while they were planned as a holiday locale, they were never used for this purpose. The complex has a formal heritage listing as a particularly striking example of Third Reich architecture. |
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| 16 | Haus der Deutschen Kunst, Munich | |||||||||||||
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The building was constructed from 1934 to 1937 following plans of architect Paul Ludwig Troost as the Third Reich's first monumental propaganda building. The museum, then called Haus der deutschen Kunst ("House of German Art"), was opened in March 1937 as a showcase for what the Third Reich regarded as Germany's finest art. The inaugural exhibition was the Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung ("Great German art exhibition"), which was intended as an edifying contrast to the condemned modern art on display in the concurrent Entartete Kunst exhibition. |
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| 17 | Ehrentempel | |||||||||||||
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The Ehrentempel ("honor temples") were two structures, erected by the Nazis in 1935, housing the sacrophagi of the sixteen members of the party who had been killed in the failed Beer hall putsch. On January 9, 1947 the main architectual features of the temples were destroyed as part of denazification. |
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| Hitler in Paris, 1940. |