Architecture in Berlin 1933–1945


Book Description

Many of the buildings erected during the era of National Socialism are still standing in downtown Berlin today. In this architecture guide Matthias Donath, building and art historian, presents thirty typical examples of Third Reich architecture. Almost all of the buildings from this period are preserved except for the Reich Chancellery where only traces remain. In addition to ministries, administration centers and embassies, the author describes bunkers, office buildings and a house of the Hitler Youth. The Tempelhof Airport and Olympic grounds are well-known even outside of Berlin. The buildings presented in the book show how diverse the architecture was during these years. The author explains their different functions as well as their intended political message and how they were used for propaganda. Historical photos show the original buildings. Visitors to Berlin and Berlin residents curious about their city’s history will find this book illuminating. The sites are easy to find with the help of a map. Thirty buildings from Berlin’s inner districts are described in this architecture guide, including traces of the Reich Chancellery, various ministries, the Reich National Bank, air-raid and anti-aircraft bunkers, embassies, the Tempelhof Airport, the exhibition and convention grounds, business offices, a model house for the Hitler Youth, the Reich Sports Field (Olympic stadium) and the ensemble at Fehrbelliner Platz.




New German Architecture


Book Description

This is a dual language ( German/English ) reprint of the now extremely rare and expensive book, Neue Deutsche Baukunst, published in 1941 to showcase the architectural beauty of the building programme instituted by National Socialist Germany. Book consists of photographs of these new structures with details of the architect or artist involved in the project.




Hitler's Berlin


Book Description

A leading expert on the 20th-century history of Berlin, employing new and little-known German sources to track Hitler's attitudes and plans for the city, presents a fascinating new account of Hitler's relationship with Berlin, a place filled with grandiose architecture and imperial ideals, which he used as a platform for his political agenda.




Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture


Book Description

Architectural design can play a role in helping make the past present in meaningful ways when applied to preexisting buildings and places that carry notable and troubling pasts. In this comparative analysis, Rumiko Handa establishes the critical role architectural designs play in presenting difficult pasts by examining documentation centers on National Socialism in Germany. Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture analyzes four centers – Cologne, Nuremberg, Berlin, and Munich – from the point of view of their shared intent to make the past present at National Socialists' perpetrator sites. Applying original frameworks, Handa considers what more architectural design could do toward meaningful representations and interpretations of difficult pasts. This book is a must-read for students, practitioners, and academics interested in how architectural design can participate in presenting the difficult pasts of historical places in meaningful ways.




Building Nazi Germany


Book Description

This richly illustrated book details the wide-ranging construction and urban planning projects launched across Germany after the Nazi Party seized power. The authors show that it was an intentional program to thoroughly reorganize the country's economic, cultural, and political landscapes in order to create a dramatically new Germany, saturated with Nazi ideology.




German Reich 1933–1937


Book Description

Executive editor: Wolf Gruner; English-language edition prepared by: Caroline Pearce and Dorothy Mas This volume documents the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich between 1933 and 1937. The documents illustrate the ways in which the Jews in Germany were thrown out of their jobs and excluded from public institutions and public life, and how the Nuremberg Laws reduced the status of German Jews to second-class citizens and set out to sever the ties between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. It documents the political calculations and strategy of the Nazi ruling elite in relation to antisemitic measures, and the local outbreaks of violence and terror against the Jewish population. It also illustrates the widespread indifference of non-Jewish Germans. In 1935 the Berlin rabbi Joachim Prinz described how the circumstances for the Jewish population had changed: ‘The Jew’s lot is to be neighbourless. We would not find it all so painful if we did not have the feeling that we once did have neighbours.’ Learn more about the PMJ on https://pmj-documents.org/




Relics of the Reich


Book Description

The author of Secret Wartime Britain examines the architecture left behind after the Nazis were defeated in World War II. Hitler’s Reich may have been defeated in 1945, but many buildings, military installations, and other sites remained. At the end of the war, some were obliterated by the victorious Allies, but others survived. For almost fifty years, these were left crumbling and ignored with post-war and divided Germany unsure what to do with them, often fearful that they might become shrines for neo-Nazis. Since the early 1990s, Germans have come to terms with these iconic sites and their uncomfortable part. Some sites are even listed buildings. Relics of the Reich visits many of the buildings and structures built or adapted by the Nazis and looks at what has happened since 1945 to uncover what it tells us about Germany’s attitude to Nazism now. It also acts as a commemoration of mankind’s deliverance from a dark decade and serves as renewal of our commitment to ensure history does not repeat itself.




The Reich Chancellery and Fuhrerbunker Complex


Book Description

Germany's Nazi government initially made its primary headquarters in one of Berlin's oldest buildings, the Old Reich Chancellery. Unsatisfied with the building, Adolf Hitler commissioned Albert Speer to design and build a newer, grander structure, and his New Reich Chancellery was completed in early 1939. Hitler described his New Reich Chancellery and other Nazi buildings as his "words of stone," eternal monuments to the work that he and the Nazi party intended to perpetuate. Frequented by Hitler and his inner circle, the Chancellery witnessed their fanatical plans and was an architectural reflection of Hitler's megalomania. The Fuhrerbunker, built underneath the Chancellery, became the last refuge of a dying regime; it was here that Hitler retreated to order the destruction of Germany and ultimately to take his own life. This book is a virtual tour of the now demolished Chancellery and Fuhrerbunker. It covers the history of each structure, notes the architectural changes that Hitler made to suit his purposes, and describes the historical events that took place within each building's walls. Appendices contain a chronology of Reich Chancellors (1871-1945), a detailed list of renovations to the Chancellery, and a register of notable gatherings that took place in the Old Reich Chancellery prior to 1914. Texts of various speeches by Hitler are reproduced, along with a copy of his agreement to occupy Czechoslovakia, which was signed in the Reich Chancellery.




Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989


Book Description

A great deal of attention continues to focus on Berlin’s cultural and political landscape after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but as yet, no single volume looks at the divided city through an interdisciplinary analysis. This volume examines how the city was conceived, perceived, and represented during the four decades preceding reunification and thereby offers a unique perspective on divided Berlin’s identities. German historians, art historians, architectural historians, and literary and cultural studies scholars explore the divisions and antagonisms that defined East and West Berlin; and by tracing the little studied similarities and extensive exchanges that occurred despite the presence of the Berlin Wall, they present an indispensible study on the politics and culture of the Cold War.




Nazi Buildings, Cold War Traces and Governmentality in Post-Unification Berlin


Book Description

Bringing together approaches from cultural and urban history, as well as German studies and political theory, Clare Copley's probing study reflects on post-unification responses to iconic Nazi architecture to reveal insights into power, legitimacy and memory politics in the Berlin Republic. Analysing public debates, physical interventions into the buildings and the structuring of the memory landscapes around them, the book demonstrates that the politics of memory impact not just upon the built environment of the post-dictatorship city, but upon the way decisions about it are made. In doing so, Nazi Buildings, Cold War Traces and Governmentality in Post-Unification Berlin makes the case for conceiving of a specifically 'post-authoritarian' governmentality and uses the responses to constructions like Goering's Aviation Ministry, Tempelhof Airport and the Olympic complex to explore its features.