Nuremberg Rehabilitates a Nazi Monument

A towering brick structure that was to have been the Nazi Party’s convention center has stood on the edge of this Bavarian city for more than 60 years, silently evoking the evil that came to life here.

It was in Nuremberg that Adolf Hitler stoked the fires of hate with massive rallies and marches meant to intimidate Europe with Germany’s military might. And it was here that the Third Reich issued its infamous 1935 “race laws,” denying citizenship to non-Germans and forbidding marriage between Aryans and Jews.

But as a new museum emerges in the form of an incongruously modern addition to the architectural monstrosity that the Nazis never finished, designers have symbolically killed a monumental reminder of the Holocaust by literally driving a stake through its heart.

Two years ago, Austrian architect Guenther Domenig won an international contest to design the new museum and documentation center, proposing a spear-like ascending glass gangway that penetrates the walls and floors of the Nazi structure. The original building is made up of 70 million bricks cut by concentration camp inmates who later perished in places such as Auschwitz.

“It seems to conquer the enormity of the structure and, in so doing, to defeat its power to intimidate,” said Hans-Christian Taeubrich, the project manager bringing Domenig’s design to life in the north wing of the structure abandoned by the Nazis in 1939 just short of completion.

The historical preservation project, which has forced Nuremberg to confront its unsavory role in the Nazi era, undertakes a uniquely challenging task. It attempts to document the Third Reich’s use of propaganda rituals to incite the masses without encouraging what local historian Eckart Dietzfelbinger calls “voyeurism.”

“It’s a very delicate balance to strike,” said the historian, who is engaged in developing the new museum. “On one hand you want to tap the educational and deterrent powers of the premises where the macro-criminal events took shape, while on the other hand avoid giving those events a new platform.”

The adjacent Nazi rallying grounds already draw more than 100,000 visitors each year, even though the four-story, horseshoe-shaped congress hall designed to accommodate 50,000 people has yet to open.

Once the museum and documentation center are opened next November, the Nuremberg Municipal Museums foundation expects that the facility will draw many more of those visiting the city. Nuremberg’s famous annual Christmas market alone attracts 2 million tourists, and new bus and streetcar connections are planned to cut the journey from the central train station to the rallying grounds to less than 10 minutes.

Thirteen exhibition galleries fashioned out of original rooms of the Nazi structure will offer multimedia presentations about the rallies and ceremonies conducted by Hitler and his henchmen. The Nazi events were held at the adjacent Zeppelin field and the 1.2-mile Great Road that was an avenue for military and workers’ parades.

A video presentation about the museum project includes footage of some of Hitler’s most impassioned speeches and of sprawling ranks of shirtless laborers paying homage to their Fuehrer along the processional route.

The central, permanent exhibit for the museum is titled “Fascination and Terror.” Its creators contend it will unmask the Nazis’ use of ritual and gigantism to instill in the masses the will to carry out Hitler’s quest for world domination.

The glass gangway will take visitors through one wing of the congress hall, past displays on Nazi propaganda used during party rallies that took place here each September from the late 1920s until the Third Reich’s defeat in 1945. Although the huge hall was never used for the rallies, a viewing platform on the roof of the new museum overlooks the Zeppelin field and offers a panoramic perspective on the 3-square-mile site.

Other exhibits will acquaint visitors with the Fuehrer myth, the role of this city as the inspirational site, Nazi conduct of World War II, the Holocaust and the 1945-46 war crimes trials that also have become synonymous with the city.

One aspect of the evolving museum already open to the public is the presentation about the Nuremberg trials of 21 Nazi war criminals. It includes guided tours each weekend to the wood-paneled Courtroom 600 of the district court building where the architects of the Holocaust and war were convicted. Those displays will be moved to the congress hall museum once construction of the $8-million facility and its exhibits is completed.

Only after 1990, when reunification of Germany fostered fresh efforts to understand the past, did Nuremberg begin to seriously confront its role in Nazi history. Even so, the museum here probably will open a full decade ahead of the huge Holocaust memorial planned in Berlin, which has been endlessly delayed by debates about its scope and conception.

“It took this city 50 years to deal with its history as the incubator of National Socialism,” Dietzfelbinger said. “There was no interest in discussing blame or responsibility after the war--people just wanted to rebuild and get on with their lives. It took the initiative of the 1960s generation to force the population to consider how to preserve and present this chapter of history they had a very prominent role in writing.”

In the early years after the war, the rallying grounds were used to house refugees from Soviet-occupied regions and by U.S. troops in need of an airfield and storage space. Even today, the courtyard of the congress hall is used in what project manager Taeubrich calls a “pragmatic fashion”--as a parking lot for municipal equipment such as snowplows and as warehouse space by renters. By the time the museum is fully operational, the stacks of tires and lumber and the parked vehicles will have to be cleared out, he said.

“The grounds need to be empty so visitors can reflect on the magnitude of this structure and what it was intended to inspire,” Taeubrich said. “It needs to be an open canvas for contemplation.”