Remaining Nazi Eagles

Examples from throughout this site

Berlin
Olympic bell then and now. swastika eagleThe Nazi eagle on the 1936 Olympic bell then and now. From its original position in the Bell tower at the western end of the Reichs Sportfield planted amid the tiers of the Maifeld stands could be observed the whole city of Berlin. During the games, it was used as observation post by administrators and police officials, doctors and the media was the Olympic Bell. On its surface were the Olympic Rings with an eagle, the year 1936, the Brandenburg Gate, the date 1.-16. August and a motto between two swastikas: "I call the youth of the world" and "11. Olympic Games Berlin" - even though the Games constituted the 10th (Summer) Olympics, but the Games of the XI Olympiad. Bells had a special significance at the time, often placed on war memorials to commemorate dead soldiers or between 1934 and 1936 found a place on the bell towers of the three NS Ordensburgen - training centres for future Nazi Party leadership personnel. In the year of the Olympic Games in Berlin, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, the Reich Sports Leader and Commissioner and Chairman of the German Reich Association for Physical Exercise (DRL) and National Socialist Reich Association for Physical Exercise (NSRL) since 1933, the Olympic bell served as an "eternal reminder of the sacrificial death of our heroes" and as an "obligation" for the living. 
Olympic bell then and now. swastika eagleThe Bell Tower was the only part of the Reichssportfeld that was destroyed in the war. The Third Reich used the tower's structure to store archives such as films. Soviet troops set its contents on fire, turning the tower into a makeshift chimney. The structure emerged from the fire severely damaged and weakened. In 1947 British engineers demolished the tower, however eventually reconstructed it faithfully in 1962. The Olympic Bell (which had survived the fire and remained in its place in the tower) fell 77 metres and cracked and has been unable to sound since then. In 1956 the bell was rescued, only in order to be used as a practice target for shooting with anti-tank ammunition. The old bell survives to this day and serves now as a memorial, featuring an half-heartedly de-nazified swastika still...


The Adler Apotheke on Berliner Str. 91 in the 1920s and with the Nazi-era eagle today 
Me standing outside another chemist's in Zehlendorf in 2020 with a Nazi-era eagle on the facade. Established 125 years ago on hauptstrasse, today the street is called Teltower Damm; the roof of the pharmacy building was damaged in an air raid in 1943. 
Through Gleichschaltung, the Nazis placed the rail network under direct government control on 10 February 1937, adding swastikas to the Hoheitsadler on the railcars. Here, at the back of the central office of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, is the stone emblem- a winged wheel- although the swastika relief at the base has been removed.

The Regionaldirektion Berlin-Brandenburg der Bundesagentur für Arbeit as it appeared when it served as the administration building for Fritz Todt's Armaments Ministry and today, where it serves as the state labour department. The eagle remains unmolested, overlooking the capital still.

Post office on Knesebeckstraße 95, showing Reichsadler above door
Built between 1934 and 1940 to a design by Heinrich Wolff to house the central bank , the Reichsbank became the Finance Ministry and later headquarters of the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party. As shown in the photo on the right, there remains today a reichsadler designed by Kurt Schmidt-Ehmen over the doorway of the Finanzamt Charlottenburg on Bismarkstraße in Berlin, the swastika covered by the address number.

Joseph Wackerle's reichsadler dating 1935 at the Siemens Ehrenmal
 
The encircled swastikas on the top left panel and the right surmounted by the Nazi eagle have been erased on the door to the Martin Luther Memorial Church
The Reichsadler remains on the front façade of the Amtsgericht in the Berlin suburb of Wedding.
Reichsadler dating from 1935 by Max Esser at Lüdenscheider Weg 2-4 near Haselhorster dam within a children's playground.

The Nazi eagle, shorn of its swastika, still remains at the former Tempelhof aeroport. Amongst the first projects the Nazis undertook with the reconstruction of Berlin was the planned renovation of Berlin's Tempelhof International Airport, which began in 1934. Tempelhof was dramatically redesigned as the gateway to Europe, and became the forerunner of today's modern airports. Indeed, the airport halls and the neighbouring buildings are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and Tempelhof has been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations. However, although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of the war. Tempelhof was one of Europe's three iconic pre-war airports, the others being London's now defunct Croydon Airport and the old Paris–Le Bourget Airport. It acquired a further iconic status as the centre of the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49.  
 

The Nazi eagle remaining at Fort Hahneberg. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, four forts were planned to protect the Spandau Armaments Center as part of the citadel at Spandau. In the end only one of them was built, as the development of artillery, especially the introduction of explosive grenades, made such types of fortification useless. Fort Hahneberg was thus completed in 1886 and put to use two years later serving, among other things, as a barracks and central archive for military medicine until 1945. In 1903  it served as a training center for the infantry. During the so-called Buchrucker putsch on October 1, 1923 when an attempt by the Black Reichswehr to overthrow the German government after it had ended passive resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr on September 26, 1923 occurred, the fort and the Spandau Citadel were briefly occupied by putschists who had to surrender to regular Reich defence units. From 1924 to 1934 the Flugtechnische Verein Spandau used some structures of the fort in order to build gliders there. With the establishment of the Wehrmacht in 1935, the fort became a training location again and was expanded. After the war parts of the brick walls and structures were broken up to make the fort unusable as a military installation by blowing up the moat defences. The rubble was transported away as building material for the reconstruction of Berlin as residents were given permission to demolish the Escarpemauer and other components for material extraction for the repair of destroyed buildings or for the construction of new houses.  Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the fort was located at the border crossing point on Heerstraße and was only been accessible to the public again since 1990. The Nazi eagle above the entrance has been allowed to remain.

 

 BAVARIA

 Nuremberg 
GIF: transformer building   GIF: Nuremberg transformer building

  Located behind the Grandstand on Regensburger Straße, the station was built in 1936 by Albert Speer for the power supply to the Party Rally Grounds. It supplied the power for the Party Rally Grounds and the so-called 'Cathedral of Light.' The energy demands of lighting and the general running of the grounds was extremely high. The transformer station could handle the power supply for a major city.You can still see the faint outline of the Reich eagle which apparently does not cause concern to Burger King.

Arabella Sheraton Hotel (Fränkischer Hof)
 
This Nazi shield with its swastika somewhat intact was reinstalled in the front of this hotel, having originally come from the Fränkischer Hof which shows it and the three other shields high above the entrance. The Fränkischer Hof had originally mostly accommodated the press during Party Rallies.

Reichsbahndirektion
 
The Nazi eagle still adorns the main administrative building for the railway.

Munich
Luftgaukommando, Prinzregentenstraße
(
VII Regional HQ of the Luftwaffe)
 


Inside a Nazi eagle still greets visitors, albeit sans swastika.
 Outside the door is flanked by two eagles. From 1940, the entire building served as the command post of the Air District Headquarters, which was engaged in the comprehensive development of air defence and the live experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Here, not only were the air armament and the air war planned and the air defences coordinated, but later the defusing of unexploded ordnance was organised.
In addition, to improve its defences against the Allies, in the first quarter of 1944 the Luftgau Command VII planned the construction of two taxiways and alternative roads, shatterproof aircraft boxes and small hangars. This expansion work was carried out by various companies under the construction management of the Organization Todt (OT) which again involved prisoners of war and forced labourers as workers. Many of these 350 forced labourers had been deported from Athens followed by six hundred Jewish concentration camp prisoners from September to November 1944. Another camp surrounded by barbed wire was probably set up in 1942 for around an hundred Soviet prisoners of war. This would be swelled further by French prisoners of war, Belgian civilian workers, Italian Wehrmacht volunteers, a group of Hungarian soldiers and, from January 1945, around 300 members of the British army from India who had been captured in North Africa. Today the former dining area serves as a library. The historic rooms have been left largely in its original state. Today it houses the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology.
Built between 1935-1936 by the architect German Bestelmayer, this building still displays the steel helmets, eagles, and, incredibly (and illegally) swastika window grills today:

right across the street is the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum

Over the side door a Nazi eagle remains, missing only its swastika whilst at the other end a wreath is shorn of its offending symbol as well.

Bavarian State Tax Office (Oberfinanzpräsdium)

This building at Sophienstr. 6 was constructed between 1938 to 1942. During the Nazi era this building administered the expropriation of assets of political opponents and racial undesirables through public auctions of furnishings. Regarding the “Arisierung” of Jewish property, the fiscal authority located here played a key role. After 1945 it was found that 1,589 Munich properties had been confiscated by this office.
Victims of Hitlerism still have to endure this symbol when entering a government building. That this building served a key role in the unrestrained plundering of the Jews during the Nazi period, its continued existence is all the more striking.
This less-offensive Eagle in the courtyard represents the Bavarian Free State. After the war this building served the American Military Authorities before hosting the America Haus (until it moved to the former Führerbau in 1948). This is also where the Bavarian State Parliament met from May 1947 until January 1949.
Nazi Party offices Schellingstraße 50
This is where Hitler met Eva Braun for the first time as she worked in the new shop of Hoffmann, opened in 1913, on Schellingstraße 50. They first met in 1929, when he was 40 and she was 17. She worked in a Munich camera shop run by his official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. According to Hoffmann's daughter, Hitler's opening line was: "May I invite you to the opera with me, Fräulein Eva? You see, I'm surrounded by men and I know what a pleasure it is to enjoy female company."
Schellingsalon
 With Schellingsalon and the former Nazi Party Headquarters behind me.
Reichsadler schellingstrasse
Schellingstraße 50 in 1937 flying the Nazi flag and today where the offices of the Nazi Party were housed between 1925 and 1931. The Reichsadler is still above the door.This is where Hitler met Eva Braun for the first time as she worked in Heinrich Hoffmann's studio. They first met in 1929, when he was 40 and she was 17. According to Hoffmann's daughter, Hitler's opening line was: "May I invite you to the opera with me, Fräulein Eva? You see, I'm surrounded by men and I know what a pleasure it is to enjoy female company." 
  Eva was the middle of the three daughters of Fritz Braun, a  master craftsman from Simbach on the Inn. She was a pretty, empty-headed blonde, with a round face and blue eyes, who  worked as a shop girl in Hoffmann's photographer's shop. Hitler met her there, paid her a few casual compliments, gave her flowers, and occasionally invited her to be one of his party on an outing. The initiative was all on Eva's side: she told her friends that Hitler was in love with her and that she would make him marry her.
Bullock (394)
Funk-Kaserne

Dating from 1936, now used by the police.

Just outside the reichsadler remains, shorn of its swastika (although traces are left).

93 Winzererstr.
Another surviving building from the Nazi era with its iconography intact (with the colour still maintained) complete with reichsadler dating from 1936 found by odeon at Axis History Forum.

The Nazi-era eagle and arms of Munich remain on the façade below the astronomical clock of the Deutsches Museum. In the post-war period, these conflicts were stylised into a confrontation with National Socialism in general. Those areas in which the Deutsches Museum had sought to work with the regime were forgotten and repressed. Following the war the museum had to be closed for repairs and temporary tenants, such as the College of Technology and the Post Office used museum space as their own buildings were being reconstructed. The Museum was also home to the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews, representing Jewish displaced persons in the American Zone of Germany after the war.
Of the museum itself, Hitler had remarked June 13, 1943 that
One of the great attractions of the Deutsches Museum in Munich is the presence of a large number of perfectly constructed working models, which visitors can manipulate themselves. It is not just by chance that so many of the young people of the inland town of Munich have answered the call of the sea.
Deutsches Museum Kongreßsaal
The eagles that are allowed to continue to adorn the building were designed by Munich artist Kurt Schmid Ehmen (1901-1968) who had specialised in reichsadlers and swastikas (such as those found at the "Ehrenmal" der Feldherrnhalle and Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg and the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).

Cologne
Reichsadler found on the Autobahnbrücke Rodenkirchen

Rodenkirchen is a southern borough of Cologne.


Dortmund
 The nazi eagle remains above the entrance to the former Gestapo headquarters (and way station for those being sent to concentration camps) which today serves as the site for the exhibition Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Steinwache.
Another reichsadler, this one of the luftwaffe, remains in situ on the façade of the police academy 


NS Ordensburg Vogelsang

Eagle on a wall above the Assembly Square
Most of the sculptures in Vogelsang - "Fackelträger" (torch bearer), "Der deutsche Mensch" (The German Man), "Adler" (Eagle) and the "Sportlerrelief" (sportsmen-relief) - were created by Willy Meller:
Equestrian statue at the main gate and surviving reichsadler
An Höhenmarke at a church in the Weserbergland.

Munster

Nazi eagle actually commandeered to decorate a Munster shopping centre.
At the top of the city's Hauptklinik at 56-58 Esmarchstrasse is a Nazi eagle with the caduceus replacing the swastika.The relief itself dates from 1937-8 and the warriors on the Tympanonrelief created by Hermann Kissenkötter are now lacking their weapons.


Düsseldorf (Westphalia)
Polizeipräsidium
The Nazi eagle over the entrance of police headquarters at Jürgensplatz remains, but is covered by a plaque reading "All are equal before the law." Built from 1929 to 1932, this served as headquarters for representatives of the ϟϟ Upper Section West, the 20th SS regiment, the 6th ϟϟ Rider standard and the 4th ϟϟ Lieutenant Colonel.
In June 1933, the ϟϟ-group leader Fritz Weitzel was appointed to President-Polizeiprä. Weitzel was had joined the ϟϟ at the age of 22, and was only 29 years old when he was police chief although he was considered in Nazi circles as incompetent.
From 30 January 1933 to 8th May 1945, 7101 men and 851 women imprisoned as opponents of the Nazis. Many prisoners were handed over to the Gestapo for interrogation.


Schweigen-Rechtenbach (Rhineland-Palatinate)

From a 1940 postcard
The Weintor, built in the autumn of 1936, marks the start of the Weinstrasse in the south of the Palatinate, less than a mile from the French border. The swastika in the eagle's talons has been defaced but can still be made out.


Alzey
Another reichsadler in the Palatinate is this one, still allowed to grace the entrance of the Finanzamt


 Bochum
The nazi eagle over the entrance to the former air raid shelter at Boltestraße 38, dated 1941-1942, remains, denuded of its swastika.

Berchtesgaden
The reichsadler still looks over the town. On the right is a tour of Berchtesgaden showing all the main sites described below. Berchtesgaden is a town in southern Bavaria on the border with Austria. Although Berchtesgaden itself is nestled in a deep valley, it lent its name to Adolf Hitler’s retreat, officially known as the Berghof, on the Obersalzberg, 1,640 feet above the town. Also perched on the Obersalzberg were chalets occupied by Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann, among other top-ranking Nazis. To all appearances a large holiday retreat, the Berghof was often used by Hitler for important conferences, including that with Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg in February 1938, compelling him to accept Anschluss, and the meeting with Britain’s prime minister Neville Chamberlain in September 1938, in which Hitler presented his demands with regard to Czechoslovakia. A network of bunkers and air raid shelters existed under the Berghof, and a private elevator, its shaft cut through solid rock, connected it with Hitler’s sanctum sanctorum, “Eagle’s Nest,” at the very top of the mountain. The Berghof proper was destroyed in an Allied air raid in April 1945, and the building’s ruins were razed in 1952. A stand of trees was planted on the site. Eagle’s Nest survived the bombing and is now a teahouse, which may be visited by tourists.

Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden

Reichsadler still present after 70 years....

Bremen
 
Nazi eagle remaining on the façade of Allianz-Haus at Sögestraße 59.

Pelzerhaken (Schleswig-Holstein)
This lighthouse on the Baltic was built in 1843 and stands at 19 metres, although the eagle itself has remained since its establishment in 1936

Kiel
At the east shore of Kiel Bay is the U-boat Memorial at Möltenort to the memory of submariners who lost their lives. The reichsadler is by Fritz Schmoll, responsible for others seen on this site. The photo on the left shows its inauguration in 1938.
Erlangen
This town of 100,000 is located just over ten miles north of Nuremberg. There are two notable examples of reichsadlers still existing:
The Amtsgericht
The reichsadler of the doorway of the Amtsgericht on Sieboltstraße 2


Friedrich-Rückert-Schule

The entrance to Friedrich-Rückert-Schule at the Ohmplatz with a detail of the shield (dated 1936) and one of the carvings adorning the side of the door.
 Around the corner over another doorway is this disturbing reminder... Schoolchildren continuing to support the Nazi eagle, albeit without swastika. The school can be seen behind this monument celebrating the reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990

Bergen-Hohne
Hoppenstedter Strasse with reichsadler above the door, still overlooking the entrance
Established by the Wehrmacht in 1935, at the end of war it was taken over by British occupation forces and some of its facilities used as a liberation camp for survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was located a few miles away.
Hanover (lower Saxony)
On top of the 18-metre column erected in 1936 by the Hannover town counci is a 4.5-metre statue of the torchbearer by Hermann Scheuernstuhl for the official inauguration of the Nordufer des Maschsee, a man-made lake in the town. Poised on a sphere, the nude figure actually maintains his Hitler salute whilst holding the Olympic flame carried to the Games from Olympia for the first time in 1936. The "Victory Column" glorified the Nazi state on its plinth inscription, from which the swastika was struck off in 1945.


Marburg

The Eagle remains sans swastika at the Hessian State Archives, but the ceiling maintains them.
Above the door the small bust replaces the one of Hitler's during the Third Reich whilst outside one can find another eagle defaced on the Hausecke der ehemaligen Jägerkaserne in Marburg

Darmstadt
Eagle above the rear main entry to the Robert-Piloty building, department of Computer Science, Technical University of Darmstadt. On the night of September 11 September 12, 1944 eighty per cent of the city, including many of the university's buildings were destroyed during a bomb attack. So far to date Darmstadt is the only German city that has given a synagogue to its Jewish community as a gesture of reconciliation.
 
A reichsadler also remains on the façade of the Psychologiegebäude, here shown then and now 

Offenbach am Main 
Reichsadler remaining over the entrance of the former bunker on Friedhofstrasse 
Ulm
A reichsadler still remains above the doorway of an office building, its removed swastika inviting graffiti.

Villingen-Schwenningen
The Friedensschule at Mozartstraße 12 dates from the 1930s and still sports the nazi eagle
 The Burenhaus then and today. After taking power in 1933, the Nazis used the building as their party headquarters. Given its location at the centre of the marktplatz, it was ideally suited for parades and national celebrations and party events. In common parlance, the building soon became known as the 'Brown House'. Its fuhrer balcony was created and remains today, the nazi eagle still present in the grill. 

Augsburg
Just from the train station down Prinzregentstr. is the Landratsamt (District administration office) with the reichsadler still above the door and state-protected by a mesh screen.
The left shows a relief on a building at Am Haus Theodor Wiedemann Strasse 35 representing a link between the Roman Empire and the Third Reich whilst the right shows under the claws of an eagle a tank and the navy, with above it the air force bombing and the army. The tank and lightnings are toward the east aligned. If one puts the realm eagle on a map, heading direction the north, the view is against France. The line of sight of the NSDAP Reichsadlers was modified to the right (the east).

Herrsching am Ammersee

Herrsching am Ammersee on the east shore of the Ammersee southwest of Munich is usually the starting point of trips to Andechs Abbey. This, one of the most impressive Nazi eagles remaining in Germany, is found on the façade of the former Reichsfinanzschule.

Schwäbisch Hall
Nazi eagle decorating a branch of Sparkasse


Rohrbühl Münchberg
This was built in the mid 1930s to honour the war dead of the Great War. The reichsadler has long since been removed.

Straubing

Overlooking the Danube and towards the bridge is this reichsadler, created by Munich sculptor Fritz Schmoll.

Going....

Going.....
Gone!

Although not in Germany and thus outside the stated scope of this site, it's nearby in Hagenau, Bergheim bei Salzburg in Austria. The eagle had been on the footings of the Autobahn bridge next to the bike path and has now been recently obliterated after 71 years.