Showing posts with label Luitpoldhalle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luitpoldhalle. Show all posts

Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally Grounds

Click here for Nuremberg old town
Zeppelinfeld MapHome of infamous Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer and Gauleiter of Franconia, Nuremberg held especial significance for the Nazis. It was because of the city's relevance to the Holy Roman Empire and its position in the centre of Germany that the Nazis chose the city to be the site of huge Nazi Party conventions–the Nuremberg rallies- held annually from 1927 to 1938. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the rallies became huge state propaganda events, a centre of anti-Semitism and other Nazi ideals. It was at the 1935 rally that Hitler specifically ordered the Reichstag to convene at Nuremberg to pass the Nuremberg Laws which revoked German citizenship specifically for Jews, Afro-Germans, and gypsies from German citizenship; to this day one could be born in Germany yet not be allowed citizenship as in the case of my son. A number of premises were constructed solely for these assemblies, some of which were not finished and so many examples of Nazi architecture can still be seen in the city today.
Nuremberg party grounds then nowThe site of the rallies on the outskirts of Nuremberg, particularly the enormous Zeppelin Meadow, was conspicuous for its monumental architecture and landscaping. The Nazis pioneered elaborate staging and lighting techniques to give the annual celebrations the character of sacred religious rituals with Hitler in the role of High Priest. The function of the ceremonies was to manufacture ecstasy and consensus, eliminate all reflective and critical consciousness, and instil in Germans a desire to submerge their individuality in a higher national cause.
Zeppelinfeld then now In 1933 and 1934, the Zeppelinfeld meadow served as a parade ground for the Nazis during their Party Rallies. They put up temporary wooden stands for the spectators but by 1935–1936, the Zeppelin Field, complete with stone stands, was constructed to plans by architect Albert Speer. The complex is almost square, and centres on the monumental Grandstand with the “Führer’s Rostrum”. The visibly lower spectators’ stands on the other three sides were divided by these flag supporters. There were 34 of them mounting six flag poles which surrounded the Zeppelinfeld, dividing the seating areas and providing toilet facilities. The interior which measured 312 by 285 metres provided space for up to 200,000 people for the mass events staged by the Nazis.
The so-called 'Cathedral of Ice.'
The so-called 'Cathedral of Ice.'
The climax of the rally occurred at the Zeppelin Field on 7 September. Hitler's peroration came as darkness fell and the whole arena was then lit by 130 anti-aircraft searchlights shining vertically into the sky. Their beams formed what Albert Speer called the "first luminescent architecture", vast columns supporting the blue dome of a gigantic "cathedral of light." The glow could be seen nearly 100 miles away, in Frankfurt. What remained hidden, as the party choreographers had planned, were the paunches of the 21,000 standard-bearers; for the klieg lights focussed on the swastika flags crowned with eagles as they were marched in ten columns through the ranks of nearly half a million Nazis to the floodlit grandstand. After an oath-taking ceremony Hitler drove slowly back through the thronged and cheering streets of Nuremberg at the head of a torchlight procession. Bonfires blazed on the hilltops and the parade "looked like a river of molten, bubbling lava which slowly finds its way through the valleys of the city."
Pergamon Altar
Albert Speer had chosen the Pergamon Altar, built during the reign of Eumenes II in the first half of the second century BCE, as a model for his design of a massive stone structure some 400 metres long and 24 metres high on the Zeppelin Field. Here the altar is shown during the Third Reich and me in front t0day. Pergamon had been the centre of pagan worship in Asia Minor; Revelation ii.12, refers to “the church in Pergamum …where Satan’s throne is.” On this altar, apparently burnt sacrifice was practiced as recorded in Pausanias v.13.8. Lucius Ampelius also wrote of this altar in chapter VIII (Miracula Mundi) of his liber memorialis where he described "a great marble altar, forty feet high, with colossal sculptures. It also shows a Gigantomachy". The formerly thriving city had lain forgotten and in ruins until 1864 when German engineer Carl Humann discovered one of antiquities’ greatest monuments- the Altar of Zeus. The altar was excavated and taken stone by stone to Berlin where it was reassembled in its own museum. The Ottoman government agreed that the ancient foundation of the altar would become the property of Germany. In 1930 the Pergamon Museum was opened to the public. At the end of the war, the pieces of the altar which had been placed in an air-raid shelter near the Berlin zoo fell into the hands of the Red Army and were taken to the Soviet Union as war trophies where they were stored in the depot of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad until 1958. The next year much of the collection was returned to East Germany, including the altar fragments. Under the leadership of the museum's then-director, Carl Blümel, only the altar was presented as it had been before the war. The other antiquities were newly arranged, not least because the Altes Museum had been destroyed.
Zeppelintribüne then now
The Zeppelintribüne during the 1935 party rally before the columns and rear façade were added whilst even using older buildings. Often propaganda effects were created with wooden dummies as with Speer's eagle here behind and above the central building forming a structure with another stage system. The party congress of 1934 as depicted in Triumph of the Will still characterises the collective image of these major events. This grandiose stone structure, which ran the full length of one side of the field, was the work of the young architect Albert Speer, whom Hitler also commissioned to oversee a master plan for the Rally Grounds complex. Speer's Tribune took the form of a long grandstand-like structure, flanked at each end with massive 'book-end' pylons, and dignified by a colonnaded screen behind the seating, topped by a giant swastika set in an oak leaf wreath. A small, squareish podium- the Führer's rostrum- jutting out from a raised platform at the centre of the structure, allowed Hitler to review march-pasts of Labour Service battalions and youth groups, and military demonstrations staged by the armed forces. In the subsequent expansion of 1936-1938, the wood cladding was replaced with often only the existing building fabric overbuilt. Deadline pressure to complete such monumental architecture for each Reich Party Rally in September led to an overly fast planning and construction execution. At least in the case of the main rooms and exterior, the Zeppelin tribune was completed in 1938 for the last rally. Much structural damage which continues to trigger the current debate about the building's preservation and securing projects began as early as 1941 when many stones had to be replaced because they had been built too quickly and due to sufficient moisture.
Members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) parading before Hitler
Members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) parading before Hitler on September 7, 1938 and me in front seventy years later. It was at this event that Hitler delivered an address before blue collar workmen (Arbeitsmänner), culminating in the following words:
We are proud of you! All of Germany loves you! For you are not merely bearers of the spade, but rather you have become bearers of the shield for our Reich and Volk! You represent the most noble of slogans known to us: “God helps those who help themselves!” I thank you for your creations and work! I thank your Reich Leader of Labour Service for the gigantic build-up accomplished! As Führer and Chancellor of the Reich, I rejoice at this sight, standing before you, and I rejoice in recognition of the spirit that inspires you, and I rejoice at seeing my Volk which possesses such men and maids! Heil Euch!
According to Speer (66) in Inside the Third Reich:
Bavarian International School at Zeppelintribüne then now
My Bavarian International School students in 2012
To clear the ground for it, the Nuremberg streetcar depot had to be removed. I passed by its remains after it had been blown up. The iron reinforcements protruded from concrete debris and had already begun to rust. One could easily visualise their further decay. This dreary sight led me to some thoughts which I later propounded to Hitler under the pretentious heading of ' The idea was that buildings of modern construction were poorly suited to form that to future generations which Hitler was calling for. It was hard to imagine that rusting heaps of rubble could communicate these heroic inspirations which Hitler admired in the monuments of the past. By using special materials and by applying certain principles of statics, we should be able to build structures which even in a state of decay, after hundreds or (such were our reckonings) thousands of years would more or less resemble Roman models.
To illustrate my ideas I had a romantic drawing prepared. It showed what the reviewing stand on the Zeppelin Field would look like after generations of neglect, overgrown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outlines still clearly recognisable. In Hitler's entourage this drawing was regarded as blasphemous. That I could even conceive of a period of decline for the newly founded Reich destined to last a thousand years seemed outrageous to many of Hitler's closest followers. But he himself accepted my ideas as logical and illuminating. He gave orders that in the future the important buildings of his Reich were to be erected in keeping with the principles of this.

Standing on Hitler's rostrumGIF: Standing on Hitler's rostrumStanding on Hitler's rostrum

Standing on Hitler's rostrumStanding on the Zeppelintribüne's rostrum today positioned in the centre of the grandstand for which all participants of the party rally on the field, including political leaders, had to look up to Hitler just as much as the other spectators. Seen from afar, the rostrum was further emphasised by the golden swastika placed above and by a Nazi flag draped on it. It was positioned on the main axis of the Zeppelin Field so that the men of the Reich Labour Service would always march towards the swastikas and the rostrum, thus getting ever closer to Hitler. The grandstand served to confront the Führer with his followers in such a way that every year his leadership was symbolically reconfirmed and thus strengthened by forcing participants to line up before him and pledge allegiance to him. The spectators were witnesses to this staged oath of allegiance and thus became part of the “national community” which took a subordinate role to the Führer.
In June 2006, five matches of the World Cup were held at the municipal stadium in the Volkspark Dutzendteic which is now a public park that once was the Nazi Party rally grounds. Tournament organisers feared that the remains of the Nazi era buildings surrounding the stadium would be glorified, expressing concerns about misuse by the infamous English soccer hooligans in particular. In December 2005, the Times Online published how "[i]t does not take a big leap of imagination to see England fans mimicking the goose-step march heading for the Zeppelin Tribune from where Hitler took the salute from the massed ranks of party faithful." Nuremberg Mayor Ulr Maly rejected the idea of a "no go" zone for English fans, but added that the police would be mobilised immediately if anybody was seen making Hitler salutes, forbidden by German law even though I've never noticed any such authoritarian presence.
Hitler's rostrumHow far the materiality of the site is suggestive directly to the senses or emotions, rather than being actively interpreted by visitors, is more difficult to determine. Certainly, physical qualities make practical differences to how people use it. The walls of the Zeppelin Building making for such good tennis practice, or the outer corridors of the Congress Hall providing quiet shelter in which to sleep rough, are just a couple of examples of uses of the site that were never originally intended but to which its material qualities lend themselves. But what of the intended Nazi effects? How far are the buildings and former marching grounds still able to impact and enchant in the ways that Hitler and Speer had hoped? Watching people using the place and hearing them talk about it, it seemed to me that there was little to indicate much of this. Certainly, some would stand where Hitler would have stood on the Zeppelin Building, and they might even give a Nazi salute, but this was typically accompanied by joking and parody. And, certainly, some visitors talked of the chilling nature of the site, prompting them to quiet reflection... in all of their accounts it seemed that what was involved was not so much being directly affected by particular calculated features of the architecture as by their own pre-formed visions of it. They accounted for their senses of disquiet by, for example, knowing that this was where Hitler stood or by imagining vast fervent National Socialist crowds chanting in unison on the marching fields.  
Sharon Macdonald (182) Difficult Heritage
Hitler's rostrum todayDuring the Day of the Hitler Youth of September 11, 1937, and standing on the same podium now. By this time the Hitler Youth now had five million members and was the largest youth organisation in the world. Here Hitler spoke at a celebration organised by the Hitler Youth whilst it was pouring with rain which Hitler was forced to reference in his speech: "This morning I learned from our weather forecasters that, at present, we have the meteorological condition “V b.” That is supposed to be a mixture between very bad and bad. Now, my boys and girls, Germany has had this meteorological condition for fifteen years! And the Party had this meteorological condition, too! For the space of a decade, the sun did not shine upon this Movement. It was a battle in which only hope could be victorious, the hope that in the end the sun would rise over Germany after all. And risen it has! And as you are standing here today, it is also a good thing that the sun is not smiling down on you. For we want to raise a race not only for sunny, but also for stormy days!"
Hitler Youth walking past Grandstand in 1940 and today 
Hitler Youth walking past in 1940 and today
Standing outside the so-called Goldener Saal. Located below the heightened VIP stands, this large foyer was known as the 'Golden Hall' because of its gilded ceiling mosaics. Through two stairwells inside the grandstand, a cast iron door was reached, positioned above the rostrum and exactly below the golden swastika. The ornateness of the hall is noteworthy given the generally austere architectural style favoured by the Nazis. Hitler, according to Speer’s original plans, would have been able to step down to the people assembled in the Zeppelin Field area, from above, as it were although Hitler in fact preferred to drive up in a car during the party rallies, and so entered the grandstand from below, from the crowd of spectators. This, too, was calculated to stage himself as the Führer who came from 'the people and remained connected to them which meant that Hitler probably never set foot in this foyer, historically known as the “Hall of Honour”. 
GIF: Goldener SaalThe 335 m² hall was only completed in 1939, and was to be used for the first time during the party rally of that year. Large sculptures created for the four niches in the foyer by Kurt Schmid-Ehmen were never installed. At short notice, the “Party Rally of Peace” was cancelled before Germany attacked Poland and unleashed the war. The Golden Hall is the only remaining interior planned by Speer, remaining an impressive example of Nazi architecture’s resemblance to stage sets. The 36.5 × 8.7 metre-high walls are made of Lahn marble slabs whilst the ceiling which reaches a height of 7.8 metres is decorated with shimmering gold mosaics by Hermann Kaspar. The original purpose and use of the golden hall during the Nazi party rallies is no longer known today. From 1985 to 2001 it housed the Fascination and Violence exhibition, which provided the impetus for the Documentation Centre Nazi Party Rally Grounds. In 1986, the post-industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten performed in the hall for the only concert to date in the premises. Frontman Blixa Geld described the performance as a counter to its totalitarian history. Currently the Golden Hall can only be visited as part of a guided tour of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds although apparently the permanent opening of a section is planned.
Nuremberg rally grounds todayIn Germany as this site presents, there are many building relics from the Nazi era, many of which continue to be used with Nazi paraphernalia on the façades still intact- the Olympic Stadium in Berlin has remained a sports arena, the former ministries of the German Reich in Berlin were converted into offices, the “House of Art” in Munich is an exhibition venue. In Nuremberg, the situation is particularly nuanced however as the Party Rally Grounds and various buildings designed by Albert Speer served only one main purpose: as a forum for the glorification of the Nazi regime and Hitler. Germany today has no need for places for march-pasts and roll calls for 100,000 to 200,000 people in uniforms or for a megalomaniac Congress Hall for 50,000 party members which is why the Nazi buildings in Nuremberg could not be suitably used after 1945. Thus the Nuremberg buildings have remained largely in their original state with no means to strip them of their original character whilst the Zeppelin Grandstand itself is only rarely used today with the Zeppelin Field in its vast size of very little practical value today. Parts of the area are used as sports fields now; up until the mid-1990s, American forces played sports on the field and the ring road around the Zeppelin Grandstand (Norisring) annually hosts motor sport events. Between 2005 and 2011 the city invested over one million euros to safeguard access to the Zeppelin Grandstand with an additional three million euros spent on infrastructure such as paths and roads in the immediate surroundings. Nevertheless, in spite of all the repairs the Zeppelin Grandstand is collapsing. Since 2010, access for visitors to various areas has been prohibited for safety reasons with the current assumption being that sooner or later the spectator steps will have to be blocked off. According to building experts, the site cannot not be preserved without a general refurbishment with initial estimates putting the costs at between 60 and 75 million euros
Nuremberg tribune rally grounds today
From right to left: Amann, Himmler, Lutze, Buch, Rosenberg, Schwarz, K. Hierl, Bormann, standing: Frick, unidentified Labour Corps Leader, and Hitler reviewing the Labour Corps at the 9th Nazi Party rally, dubbed the "Reich Party Congress of Labour” (Reichsparteitag der Arbeit), held from September 6–13, 1937. On September 10 in a speech before these political leaders, Hitler explained the reasoning behind his choice of the above title for the congress by claiming that “[n]ow that we have freed Germany within the last four years, we have the right to enjoy the fruits of our labour.” This wording apparently signalled that Hitler had no extraordinary decisions to announce for the future, but would self-complacently contemplate the past. In fact, this Party Congress was remarkable only for its unusual tranquillity, reflecting the mood of the entire year 1937. With the exception of his customary verbal assaults upon world Bolshevism, not even Hitler’s words could disturb the apparent peace but, in all of his speeches, instead relished in eulogies of his successes in the past and his ambitions for the future.
Nuremberg tribune todayAs Germany copes with mass migration and blows to its economy, like the Volkswagen scandal, and to its pride, like the allegations it paid bribes to secure its hosting of the 2006 World Cup, it also continues to deal with vestiges of its problematic past. In few places are those questions more vivid than in Nuremberg. Should public money be spent to preserve these crumbling sites? Is controlled decay an option for anything associated with the Nazis? Or have Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, locked future generations into a devilish pact that compels Germans not only to teach the history of the Thousand Year Reich the Nazis proclaimed here but also to adapt it for each new era?
GIF: Zeppelin Grandstand then and today The Zeppelin Field was the most important event location for the party rallies. While the Luitpold Arena was firmly established as the site for the cult for the dead of the SA and ϟϟ, numerous events were staged on the Zeppelin Field. During the roll call of the Reich Labour Service, tens of thousands of their men lined up before the Hitler. Large parades and show manoeuvres of the Wehrmacht were held on the Zeppelin Field. Tanks drove up, flak was fired at aeroplanes thundering over the field at low altitude, in 1938 the prototype of a helicopter landed on the Zeppelin Field. On the “Day of Community”, young men demonstrated “virile strength” in manoeuvres with tree trunks, while young women in so-called “girls’ dances” personified the female role of future mothers desired by the Nazis.
Göring, Generaloberst Werner v. Fritsch and Generaladmiral Raeder at the Tag der Wehrmacht on September 14, 1936.Göring, Generaloberst Werner v. Fritsch and Generaladmiral Raeder at the Tag der Wehrmacht on September 14, 1936. 
Several times since 1935 Karl Bodenschatz had overheard Göring and Hitler discuss the possibility that the top army generals might be plotting against the regime, and in the autumn of 1937 Göring asked Blomberg outright whether his generals would follow Hitler into a war. It is clear that by December 1937 Göring had begun to indulge in fantasies of taking supreme command of the armed forces himself in place of Blomberg. The only other candidate would be General von Fritsch. At fifty-eight, Fritsch was not much younger than Blomberg, and Göring felt it unlikely that Hitler would feel comfortable with him. Promoted to colonel- general on April 20, 1936, Fritsch came from a puritan Protestant family. His upright bearing suggested he might even be wearing a lace-up corset. With a monocle screwed into his left eye to help his face remain sinister and motionless, he was an old-fashioned bachelor who loved horses and hated Jews with equal passion.
Irving (281) Göring
The American flag being hoisted over the swastika on April 21, 1945 and my students from the Bavarian International School today.
The American flag being hoisted over the swastika on April 21, 1945 and my students from the Bavarian International School today. 
Four days after Nuremberg fell, the US Army blew up the swastika which had been installed at the centre of the Grandstand. The gold-plated and laurel-wreathed swastika which once crowned Albert Speer’s Zeppelin tribune represented the apotheosis and fulfilment of the swastikas which are still present, but sublimated in the decorative scheme of the tribune’s interior. Ornament as the unconscious graphology of the Volkgeist was thus ‘completed’ in the self-conscious presence of the Nazi symbol, and the sign of a (Gothic, mediaeval) past is linked to the rhetoric of a glorious future, thus avoiding the displacement of tradition implied by an Enlightenment concept of progress. The Tribune swastikas expressed in microcosm Hitler’s aim of uniting the medieval Nuremberg with the ‘modern’ National Socialist city, giving equal weight to a glorious past and a glorious future, and thereby defining the present as a moment of transition from one to the other.
lake Dutzendteich then and now   
The tribune seen from across lake Dutzendteich then and now. In 1967 the columns of the Grandstand were blown up because they had become unstable. The height of the side towers was also reduced by half in the 1970s.
Grandstand
 
At the rear of the Grandstand
Nuremberg ZeppelinA visit to the Nuremberg Zeppelin field as it exists today supplies evidence of a healthy disrespect for the few remaining monuments of National Socialist architecture. On Sundays, Turkish Gastarbeiter and their families picnic in the shade of trees flanking Hitler’s ‘Great Road’, the grand thoroughfare which was intended to link the ancient Nuremberg, the ‘City of Imperial Diets’ with his modern ‘City of the Rallies’. Tennis is played against the walls of the Zeppelin tribune, and teenagers tryst on the steps. However, this reclaiming of Nazi architecture for leisure activity is frustrated by the neo-Nazi swastika graffiti which must constantly be removed from the tribune towers and entranceways. This is also the case at the Olympic stadium in Berlin, where the bronze swastikas which have been partially erased from the ceremonial bell reappear in graffiti on the lavatory walls, contesting with the countering phrase ‘Nazi raus’
Nuremberg is currently about to embark on an €85 million plan to conserve the rally Nuremberg Zeppelingrounds. Julia Lehner, Nuremberg’s chief culture official, says the intention is not to “rebuild, we won’t restore, but we will conserve. We want people to be able to move around freely on the site. It is an important witness to an era—it allows us to see how dictatorial regimes stage-manage themselves. That has educational value today.” Even though the entire site has been under a preservation order since 1973, the grandstand was assessed for damage until 2007, revealing corrosion, broken stairs, dry rot and mildew. As Daniel Ulrich, head of Nuremberg’s construction department, says, “[t]he damp is the biggest problem. The original construction was quick and shoddy. It was little more than a stage-set designed purely for effect. The limestone covering the bricks is not frost-proof and water has seeped in.” This has left the city with various options. One was to reconstruct the buildings but this threatened to be seen as glorifying the Third Reich. Others favoured a “managed decay” which would have involved the city authorities forced to fence off increasingly large parts of the grounds. On the other hand, others feared that the decaying buildings could emit the kind of “ruin romance” the Albert Speer envisioned as mentioned above. Others called for the entire site just to be bulldozed and have the site's history swept under the carpet. In the end, the decision was made to conserve the ruins in their current state and make them fully accessible. The most complex conservation challenge is the damp that has seeped into the stone walls of the ramparts and grandstand, the steps and facades. A ventilation system will be required to remove humidity from the interiors. About a quarter of the stones in the facades and steps are to be replaced by matching concrete blocks. The top layer of the compacted soil stairs of the ramparts will be replaced.In addition, a new “project room” will be installed in the grandstand. The target date for completion is 2025 at the same time Nuremberg is competing to be the European Capital of Culture that year.
Märzfeld
Albert Speer designed the Märzfeld (March Field) as an arena for Wehrmacht manoeuvres (with 955 x 610 metres interior area, making it larger than eighty football pitches) planned as the south-eastern end of the grounds. The Märzfeld was named after the ancient God of War and to commemorate the reintroduction of conscription in March 1935.
Constructing the Märzfeld top left; on the right is Speer. Below shows the detonation of the eleven towers on March Field in 1966 and 1967. Thousands of homes were needed because of the destruction caused by the war. Starting in 1957, the city began to build the new suburb of Langwasser on the south-eastern part of the former Party Rally Grounds which was then the largest building programme for any city in West Germany. Up until 1939, eleven of 24 planned Märzfeld towers had been finished. They divided the visitors‘ stands surrounding the Märzfeld. The entire complex was to provide space for about 250,000 people. A group of colossal statues, incorporating a Goddess of Victory and warriors, was planned for the central grandstand.
Nazi eagle
GIF: transformer building  
Located behind the Grandstand on Regensburger Straße, the Transformatorenstation was built in 1936 by Albert Speer for the power supply to 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 and the transformer station could handle the power supply for a major city. After 1945 the building passed into the possession of the city of Nuremberg. The local power supply company N-ERGIE used the technology for power supply until 1998, after which the technical modification of the transformer lost its purpose. One can still see the faint outline of the Nazi eagle which apparently does not cause concern to Burger King which moved into the structure exactly seventy years after its opening to the anger of sculptor Christof Popp who designed the plaques for the information system on the Nazi Party Rally Grounds. GIF: Nuremberg transformer buildingStele number 15 provides information about the substation on Regensburger Straße. Popp, who sits on the board of the architects' association BauLust, was "shocked" when he found out that he had just set up his information board next to a future Burger King branch. A hamburger restaurant negates any real historical debate leading him to complain that "[t]he building is simply used as a shell; that upsets me bitterly." To him the willingness of the city administration and the monument protection to agree to a mundane use such as the sale of chips and burgers reflects a disturbing attitude on their part. In this he's joined by architectural professor Josef Reindl who states that on the one hand, "[i]n the documentation centre the city engages with history and a few hundred metres further on, it no longer cares." The head of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds documentary centre, Hans-Christian Täubrich, also criticises the use of the building to serve American fast food by aditting that only financial interests played a role in the sale of the building and nothing else. Nevertheless, the city's monument protection has ensured that the advertising boards are not screwed to the facade and the external impression is not changed leading to Burger King anchoring its logo to the ground as close to the front of the building as possible.
Hall of Honour (Ehrenhalle) then now
Standing in front of the Hall of Honour (Ehrenhalle) today. During the Weimar Republic, Nuremberg erected this monument to commemorate the 9,855 Nuremberg soldiers killed in the Great War. The design was by architect Fritz Mayer. A rectangular yard is adjacent to the arcaded hall, with a row of pillars carrying fire bowls on either side. Lord Mayor Hermann Luppe officially opened the hall in 1930. During the 1929 Party Rally, the Nazis for the first time incorporated the then unfinished Hall of Honour in their staging of the cult of the dead and where Hitler commemorated the fallen soldiers of the First World War and the “Martyrs of the National Socialist Movement”. The ritual was intended to commit the “party soldiers” present to sacrificing their lives for the Führer and for National Socialism. In 1933, Hitler had the Luitpold Grove park remodelled into the Luitpold Arena for the Party Rallies. During the Party Congress of 1929 the then-unfinished "Hall of Honour" was used for the enactment of a cult of the dead by the Nazis for the first time. 
The Ehrenhalle is located at one end of the Luitpoldhain, a 21-hectare park located in the southeast of Nuremberg northwest of Volkspark Dutzendteich and which extends between Münchner Straße, Bayernstraße and Schultheißallee; on the northern edge is the Meistersingerhalle. In 1927 the first Nazi Party Rally took place here. At the second rally in 1929, the Nazis incorporated the newly completed the Ehrenhalle into their event. After the Nazis took power in 1933 they held a celebration here where Hitler on a wooden-built grandstand. As of 1933, the Luitpoldhain was transformed by a strictly structured display area as part of the plans of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, most notably by the so-called Luitpold Arena with an area of 84,000 m². Opposite the honour hall was erected a speaker's platform which was connected by a wide granite path. In this ensemble the Reichsparteitage held its rallies of SA and ϟϟ in front of up to 150,000 spectators. Central to the ritual was the blood flag, which had allegedly been carried along by the Nazis in the Hitler Putsch and which served to consecrate new standards of SA and ϟϟ units through contact. The Luitpoldhalle was eventually destroyed by the RAF during one of the first air raids on Nuremberg in the war on the night of August 28-29, 1942.
Luitpold Grove  then now
 The Luitpold Grove and its First World War necropolis became the complex's most sacred ceremonial ground, being completely reworked for the rallies. The former landscaped pleasure park was casually levelled and flanked by massive stone grandstands to be transformed into the Luitpold Arena. The resulting formalised space served as the stage for one of the most moving moments of the rally schedule whereon the seventh day of the proceedings,the massed ranks of more than 150,000 SA and ϟϟ Storm Troopers filled the floor of the arena. Hitler and his entourage then passed solemnly between the ranks along a granite path leading straight to the steps of the war memorial, where the Führer would pay his respects to the nation's and the party's martyred dead. Connected to the Luitpold Arena was the Luitpold Hall. In 1933 this area was transformed into a strictly structured parade area with an area of 84,000 m². A speaker's platform was built across from the Hall of Honour. The victims of the 1923 Hitler coup were commemorated at the hall of honour itself. The direct connection between the grandstand and the hall consisted of a wide granite path. The marches of the SA and ϟϟ with up to 150,000 people took place in this ensemble during the Nazi party rallies.
Hitler, accompanied by ϟϟ-leader Heinrich Himmler and SA-leader Viktor Lutze nuremberg The Nazis used the site primarily as a commemoration for the fallen soldiers of the Great War and commemoration of the sixteen "Martyrs of the Movement" of the November 9, 1923 Hitlerputsch in Munich. Hitler, accompanied by ϟϟ-leader Heinrich Himmler and SA-leader Viktor Lutze, strode through the arena over the 240 metre-long granite path from the main grandstand to the terrace of the Ehrenhalle and gave the Nazi salute as shown here in 1937 and the site today. The central “relic” was the blood flag that was supposedly carried by the putschists during the Hitler coup. During the consecration of the blood flag , new standards of SA and ϟϟ units were "consecrated" by touching the blood flag. The ritual was the climax of the celebration.
Arguably the most powerful scene in a film that has many is Hitler’s speech at the memorial for the late Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s most famous World War I commander and Hitler’s predecessor as the Weimar President. The Führer is surrounded by over a quarter of a million civilians and troops from the Nazi special Schutz Staffel (“Shield Squadron,” or ϟϟ , Hitler’s personal bodyguard) and Sturm Abteilung (“Storm Troopers,” or SA, an earlier paramilitary outfit eventually superseded by the ϟϟ). Hitler, flanked by ϟϟ  commander Heinrich Himmler and SA commander Viktor Lütze, slowly marches towards Hindenburg’s memorial and gives the Nazi salute in absolute silence.
Stout, Michael J. (23)  The Effectiveness of Nazi Propaganda
Inspiring the final scene of Star Wars (1977), Himmler, Hitler and Lutze at the 6th Party Congress rally in the film with the Grandstand in the background from Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
Hitler, accompanied by ϟϟ-leader Heinrich Himmler and SA-leader Viktor Lutze nurembergThe film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including those by Hitler, interspersed with footage of massed party members. Hitler commissioned the film whilst serving as unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. The overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation. Much of it takes place in the Zeppelin field- the second day shows an outdoor rally for the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Labour Service), which is primarily a series of pseudo-military drills by men carrying shovels. The following day starts with a Hitler Youth rally on the parade ground again showing Nazi dignitaries arriving with Baldur von Schirach introducing Hitler. There then follows a military review featuring Wehrmacht cavalry and various armoured vehicles.
 It's on the fourth day (Riefenstahl took liberties in her editing; this is not a true documentary despite her post-bellum protests) which provides the climax here as Wagner's music plays whilst Hitler, flanked by Heinrich Himmler and Viktor Lutze, walks through a long wide expanse with over 150,000 SA and ϟϟ troops standing at attention, to lay a wreath at a Great War Memorial.
Hitler Nuremberg then nowHitler then reviews the parading SA and ϟϟ men, following which Hitler and Lutze deliver a speech where they discuss the Night of the Long Knives purge (aka Operation Hummingbird) of the SA several months prior. The latter was the newly appointed leader of the brown-shirts, having just replaced the murdered Ernst Röhm after Operation Hummingbird. During his first official appearance as Stabschef, Shirer notes that “the SA boys received him coolly”. In one of the final scenes, Hitler holds a speech with references towards “unity” and “loyalty”, alluding to the reason for the Night of the Long Knives. This post-Operation Hummingbird aura is explicit in Triumph of the Will, and is especially heavy in the scene depicting Hitler’s address to the Schutzstaffel and the Sturmabteilung. Despite their positions and formations having aesthetic purposes, it is still evident that there was a rift between the two groups, the former being closer to Hitler than the latter, resulting in drunk quarrels during the Rally. These were, needless to say, excluded from the film. Nevertheless, the cold animosity and tension is evident. Kershaw argues that, although following the Night of the Long Knives the Sturmabteilung was forfeited its importance, Hitler could now have confidence in the freshly cleansed bloc. Triumph of the Will suggests otherwise as during Hitler’s speech, the ϟϟ surround him in a protective stance, suggesting the brown-shirts’ adherence was still doubted. Shirer confirms this in his “Berlin Diary” stating that “there was considerable tension in the stadium and I noticed that Hitler’s own ϟϟ bodyguard was drawn up in force in front of him, separating him from the mass of the brown-shirts. We wondered if just one of those fifty thousand brown-shirts wouldn’t pull a revolver, but not one did”. Martin Davidson, in his account of his grandfather’s life as an ϟϟ man, asserts that Hitler was vulnerable at a time so soon after the Night of the Long Knives and there existed considerable animosity between the two groups, culminating in fights and brawls under the influence of alcohol behind the scenes of the 1934 Rally.
Comparison of Triumph of the Will and the final scene of Star Wars IV: A New Hope; even John Williams's soundtrack evoked that heard in the earlier film.
In some cases, such as the visual allusions to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will that cap the concluding medal ceremony of A New Hope, the reference could only become clear in the context of the saga as a whole. In that case, the allusion to the Rebel victory as a quasi-fascist one suggested the moral hollowness of their victory achieved by military force, while setting the stage for their defeat at the start of the second film. The only enduring victories in these films are those built on love, understanding, and mutual self-sacrifice.

Comparison of Triumph of the Will and the final scene of Star Wars
Procession march from Triumph of the Will to commemorate the dead of the SA and the ϟϟ at the Hall of Honour in Luitpold Arena, 1934 on the left compared to the Star Wars throne room scene with Hitler, Himmler and Lutze replaced with Skywalker, Chewbacca and Solo who are walking not towards huge vertical Nazi banners but beams of light hearkening back to the Nazis' 'cathedral of ice' effect. Amir Bogen described how he had "thoroughly reviewed the narrative elements contained in the prequels which anchor the films to their historical context and suggest how they relate to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany of the 1930s. Adopting the aesthetics of Leni Riefenstahl as a dominant stylistic element reinforces the link between Star Wars films and Nazi Germany, both before and after Hitler’s rise to power.” Joel Meares,  editor-in-chief of the website Rotten Tomatoes, goes on to support this comparison: “Take Hitler’s climactic speech: The camera surveys the precisely aligned crowd as Hitler, flanked by Viktor Lutze and Heinrich Himmler, walks to the podium. Lucas echoes this in Return of the Jedi, when Emperor Palpatine arrives at Death Star II, where he’s flanked by Lord Vader.” 
Comparison of Triumph of the Will and Gladiator Such comparisons can be made alongside Ridley Scott's Gladiator with its depiction of Commodus's entry into Rome (although Scott has pointed out that the iconography of Nazi rallies was of course inspired by the Roman Empire). Gladiator reflects back on the film by duplicating similar events that occurred in Hitler's procession. The Nazi film opens with an aerial view of Hitler arriving in a plane, whilst Scott shows an aerial view of Rome, also seen through clouds, quickly followed by a shot of the large crowd of people watching Commodus pass them in a procession with his chariot. The first thing to appear in Triumph of the Will is a Nazi eagle, which is alluded to when a statue of an eagle sits atop one of the arches (and then shortly followed by several more decorative eagles throughout the rest of the scene) leading up to the procession of Commodus. At one point in the Nazi film, a little girl gives flowers to Hitler, whilst Commodus is met with several girls that all give him bundles of flowers. 
Comparison of Triumph of the Will and GladiatorThe parallels between Commodus’ parade of power in Rome and Hitler’s arrival at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg are unmistakable. Both scenes open with aerial views of monumental buildings and cheering crowds, both offer shots from the viewpoint of the central figure, the camera angles making Commodus and Hitler seem larger than life. In an explicit quotation of the moment in Hitler’s progress when he is offered flowers by a little girl, Commodus on the steps of the Senate House is presented with bouquets by children. In Ridley Scott’s Rome, the Senate House faces the Colosseum across a vast square filled with the massed ranks of soldiers. This grandiose vision of the architecture of domination owes most to Hitler’s plans for a new Berlin. Rome in the 2nd century AD, with its narrow streets and densely built Forum, was never like this. It only came close in 1932 when Mussolini drove his processional Via dell’Impero straight through the centre of the city.
Personally, I am most impressed in the opening scene when the Germans are heard giving the same war-cry as that heard in Zulu, Scott's favourite film.
Comparison of Triumph of the Will and Star Wars 
The Nazi influence continues to be made explicit in the most recent instalment of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Hitler reviewing the SA at the 1935 rally from the rostrum of the Grandstand and at the site today.
Hitler reviewing the SA at the 1935 rally from the rostrum of the Grandstand and at the site today. It was at this, the 7th Party Congress from September 10–16,  that the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws. Proclaimed as the "Rally of Freedom" (Reichsparteitag der Freiheit), the  "freedom" referred to the reintroduction of compulsory military service and thus the German "liberation" from the Treaty of Versailles. Leni Riefenstahl made the film Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht at this rally in response to several generals in the Wehrmacht protested over the minimal army presence in the earlier Triumph of the Will. The film itself depicts a mock battle staged by German troops during the ceremonies at Nuremberg on German Armed Forces Day as the camera follows soldiers from their early-morning preparations in their tent city as they march singing to the vast parade grounds where a miniature war involving infantry, cavalry, aircraft, flak guns and the first public appearance of Germany's new forbidden tank is presented before Hitler and thousands of spectators. The film ends with a montage of Nazi flags to the tune of the "Deutschlandlied" and a shot of German fighter biplanes flying overhead in a swastika formation.
The Luitpold Grove was created on the occasion of the 1906 Bavarian State Exhibition and as early as in 1927 and 1929, the Nazis held their party rallies here and in the inner city. In the September 5 entry of his Berlin Diary, Shirer wrote
I’m beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler’s astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church, he is restoring pageantry and colour and mysticism to the drab lives of twentieth-century Germans. This morning’s opening meeting in the Luitpold Hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg was more than a gorgeous show; it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervour of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral. The hall was a sea of brightly coloured flags. Even Hitler’s arrival was made dramatic. The band stopped playing. There was a hush over the thirty thousand people packed in the hall. Then the band struck up the Badenweiler March, a very catchy tune, and used only, I’m told, when Hitler makes his big entries.
GIF: LuitpoldhalleThe Luitpoldhalle: Dating back to the Bavarian Exposition, the former machine hall was renovated and first used by the Nazis for the party convention party congress of 1934. Its monumental neo-classic façade featured a shell limestone facing with three enormous entrance portals. It was in this building during the party congress of 1935, that the Nuremberg laws were adapted which deprived German Jews and other minorities of their citizenship. The Luitpoldhalle had an extension of 180 x 50 metres and offered space for up to 16,000 people. Within it the party congress took place during the Reichsparteitages. From 1933 to 1936 the largest organ in Europe with five manuals and 220 registers was installed within the hall. The structure was severely damaged by allied bombs in early 1945 and a few years later replaced by a parking lot. Part of the granite staircase leading to the building remains intact today as seen in this GIF. 
LuitpoldhalleThis facility was completely reworked for the rallies. The former landscaped pleasure park was callously levelled, flanked by massive stone grandstands and transformed into the Luitpold Arena. The resulting formalised space served as the stage for one of the most moving moments of the rally schedule. On the seventh day of the proceedings, the massed ranks of more than 150,000 SA and ϟϟ Storm Troopers filled the floor of the arena. Hitler and his entourage then passed solemnly between the ranks along a granite path leading straight to the steps of the war memorial, where the Führer would pay his respects to the nation's and the party's martyred dead. Connected to the Luitpold Arena was the Luitpold Hall, a meeting hall with a capacity for sixteen thousand people redesigned and enlarged from a structure built for the 1906 Bavarian Jubilee Exhibition.
Hitler Luitpoldhalle now then
Hitler's car in front as he leaves in 1935. There is persuasive visual evidence that the reconstruction drawings of the main buildings at Assur, the early capital of the Assryian Empire, by Walter Andrae, assistant in German excavations at Babylon, formed the most direct influence on Speer's designs. Speer need not have known much ancient history to have realised that Assur was the centre of a Semitic empire, and that the peoples who produced such buildings could not by any stretch of the imagination be supposed to have been Aryan or Indo-European. (often used interchangeably, even by reputable ancient historians). Yet in his Spandau Diaries, published in 1975 but supposedly written whilst he was still in prison, Speer admitted the importance of Assyrian models as influences on his designs.
Fliegerdenkmal

The Fliegerdenkmal, a monument to the pilots killed in the Great War designed in 1924 by Walter Franke for the fallen German pilots of the First World War which is today located directly behind the Ehrenhalle, and as it appeared in a Nazi-era postcard. It presents a crashed, upside-down plane made of limestone topped with a bronze eagle. It was originally located on Dutzendteichstraße, but was relocated to Marienbergstraße on the occasion of the opening of the new Nuremberg airport on Marienberg. During the Second World War it had ended up being severely damaged and was eventually restored in 1958, now commemorating the fallen pilots of both world wars.
Großen Straße: Speer designed the Great Street to be the central axis of the Party Rally Grounds aligned with the Imperial Castle in the Old Town to create a symbolic historic link. It is sixty metres wide and was to be two kilometres long. Between 1935 and 1939, only 1,5000 metres were actually built, with sixty thousand granite slabs. On its concrete foundation, granite slabs were laid in two different colours- light and dark grey- so that marching groups could more easily follow the orientation. The light grey, square plates have an edge length of 1.2 metres, which corresponds to the length of two Prussian marching steps serving to further facilitate the maintenance of the formation during parades. By 1939 it had been largely completed but after the start of the war no further party rallies took place and thus the unfinished complex was never used as a parade street. After the war, the Americans used the Großen Straße as a temporary airfield. Since 1968, the area has served as a parking lot for major events as the annual volksfest which was taking place when I took my photograph. The refurbishment of the Great Street between 1991 and 1995 had been specifically implemented with the road’s historic importance in mind in which the granite slabs were partly restored and partially renewed whilst a third of the area was concreted.
Kongreßhalle
The Congress Hall (Kongreßhalle), a listed building currently under monument protection. Based on the Colosseum and intended for Nazi party congresses, it is the second largest remaining Nazi structure, the largest being a former KdF holiday resort complex at Prora, on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.  The design with its cantilevered roof was designed by the Nuremberg architects Ludwig and Franz Ruff. The hall itself was planned as a Nazi convention centre with space for 50,000 people. Of the planned height of around seventy metres, only 39 were reached. The largest part of the building is made of bricks; the façade was clad with large granite slabs "from all parts of the Reich". The architecture, especially the outer facade, was inspired by the Colosseum. The laying of the cornerstone took place in 1935, but the construction remained unfinished; in particular, it still lacked its roof. The dimensions of the building's U-shaped exterior was 240 × 200 metres, its interior 175 × 155 metres. Its U-shaped design was clearly cited by Ludwig and Franz Ruff in their design for the façade as being modelled on the ancient Marcellus theatre in Rome.
Kongreßhalle
The architect Friedrich Tamms, a Nazi Party member who was also commissioned to produce large buildings for the Third Reich, described the monumentality of these buildings as the law of the monumental,
'the harsh law of architecture', which has always and in all its parts been a masculine affair, can be summarised into a clear concept: It must be strict, of a concise, clear, even classical form. It has to be easy. It must carry within itself the standard of the 'reaching to heaven'. It must go beyond the usual measure borrowed from the benefit. It must be made of the solid, firmly fixed and built according to the best rules of the craft as for eternity. It must be pointless in the practical sense, but it must be the bearer of an idea. It must carry something unapproachable that fills people with admiration, but also with shyness. It must be impersonal because it is not the work of an individual, but a symbol of a community connected by a common ideal.
Bavarian International School at Kongreßhalle
Taking my students from the Bavarian International School on tour
BIS students and Hitler in front of Congresshalle
A domed hall was to be erected a hundred feet high to seat 100,000. Among the party buildings designed to give the city of Nuremberg ‘its future and hence everlasting style’ was a congress hall for 60,000, a stadium ‘such as the world has never seen before’, and a parade ground for a million people. The excavations alone would have called for 40 miles of railway track, 600 million bricks would have been required for the foundations, and the outer walls would have been 270 feet high. Hitler paid particular attention to the durability of the bricks and other materials, so that thousands of years later the buildings should bear witness to the grandeur of his power as the pyramids of Egypt testified to the power and splendour of the Pharaohs. But if the movement should ever fall silent,’ he declared as he laid the foundation stone for the congress hall at Nuremberg, ‘then this witness here will still speak for thousands of years. In the midst of a sacred grove of ancient oaks men will then admire in reverent awe this first giant among the buildings of the Third Reich.’ And he remarked effusively to Hans Frank, "They will be so gigantic that even the pyramids will pale before the masses of concrete and colossi of stone which I am erecting here. I am building for eternity, for, Frank, we are the last Germans. If we were ever to disappear, if the movement were to pass away after many centuries, there would be no Germany any more."

hitler Congress Hall
Model of the façade in front of the shell of the Congress Hall, shown on the left in 1938 and today, with me on the other side of the shore of Dutzendteich lake which marked the entrance of the rally grounds. Although it was never completed, the Congress Hall gives an insight into the dimensions of Nazi architecture. The foundation stone was laid in 1935, but the building remained unfinished and without a roof. Popular leisure facilities, such as the public swimming baths and the 1906 lighthouse were demolished. Part of the expanse of water of the Dutzendteich lake had to be drained. The laying of foundations for the construction was extravagant and extremely costly. Since 2000, the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, with its permanent exhibition Faszination und Gewalt, has been located in the northern wing. In the southern wing the Serenadenhof, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, has its domicile. At the end of the war the structure was used to store American military equipment.

The building itself is mostly built out of clinker with a façade of granite panels. The design (especially the outer facade, among other features) is inspired by the Colosseum in Rome.
Since 2000, the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, with its permanent exhibition Faszination und Gewalt, has been located in the northern wing of the Congress Hall. In 1998, an architectural competition was held for the Dokumentationszentrum with the Austrian Günther Domenig winning with a plan for a museum that slashed through one corner of the Kongresshalle. His design emphasised the disparity between the fragmented steel and glass museum and Ruff’s monumental stone Kongresshalle. Reporters and politicians widely commented on the new structure’s asymmetrical cut into the side of the Kongresshalle seen behind me as a symbolic rejection of the Nazi past by a democratic present. Here, too, officials proclaimed that the aesthetic choices antithetical to the monumental masonry and axial plans at the site were transparent to historical critique. The German government initially rejected the plans (citing the need to channel any cultural funds to the new states in the East), but, by 1999, it had agreed to help fund the project. 
Kongresshalle inner einst jezt
Then and now, unchanged 
Faszination und Gewalt
Various permanent exhibitions deal with the causes, connections and consequences of the Nazi tyranny. Topics that have a direct connection to Nuremberg are particularly taken into account.  The concept began in 1994 when the city council of Nuremberg decided to set up the documentation centre. On November 4, 2001 it was opened by President Johannes Rau. The Austrian architect Günther Domenig won the international competition in 1998 with his suggestion to drill the northern head building diagonally through a walk-through "pile" of glass and steel. The permanent exhibition inside entitles Fascination and Violence deals with the causes, connections and consequences of national socialism. Aspects with a clear connection to Nuremberg were highlighted. Nuremberg was the city of the Reichsparteitage during the Third Reich and was often used for propaganda purposes. The history of the Reichsparteitage, the buildings of the Reichsparteitagsgelände, the Nuremberg Laws, the Nuremberg trials and its twelve successor processes as well as the handling of the Nazi architectural heritage after 1945. Since May 2006 23 stelae have been set up within the historical area, allowing an individual tour of the former rally grounds.

Inside is a model of the proposed Deutsches Stadion which Hitler can be seen reviewing before the foundation stone is laid at the 1937 Nuremberg Parteitag der Arbeit.The Deutsches Stadion was a monumental stadium designed by Speer for the Nazi Party Grounds which was begun in 1937 but interrupted two years later by the outbreak of the war and never completed.
Speer at Nuremberg
Hitler and Speer visiting the test construction site, and as it appears today. The design was, as Speer himself said, inspired not by the Circus Maximus, but by the Panathinaiko stadium which had impressed him greatly when he visited Athens in 1935. Speer's stadium in Nuremberg was planned as a gigantic expansion of the Graeco-Roman model, from which he adopted the Horseshoe design and the Propylaea, but transformed into a raised, pillar-built structure with a large colonnaded courtyard leading to the open end of the stadium's pillared inner courtyard. The planning could not be like that of the Panathinaiko stadium in Athens on a location at the bottom of a canyon, but rather aligned on a flat piece of 24 hectare land explaining why his five rows of seats for 400,000 spectators had to be supported in the usual Roman way by massive barrel vaults. Pink granite blocks were provided for the outer façade which would have been raised to a height of about ninety metres; a row of 65 metre-high arches would rest on a substructure of dark red granite.  The arcade and pedestal would suggest more a Roman amphitheatre than a Greek one which, according to tradition, did not necessarily rest on a substructure. To bring so many spectators quickly to their ranks, express elevators would have been installed to carry an hundred spectators simultaneously to the seats on the upper three ranks with Roman construction again serving as a model. 
Speer apparently chose a horseshoe shape for his building after rejecting the oval shape of an amphitheatre. The last-mentioned plan would have intensified the heat after Speer's assertion, as well as a psychological disadvantage - a comment which he did not elaborate. When Speer mentioned the enormous cost of the building, Hitler, who laid the foundation on September 9, 1937, replied that the construction would cost less than two battleships of the Bismarck class.  Wolfgang Lotz, who wrote about the German Stadium in 1937, commented that it would take twice the number of spectators who would have found a place in the Circus Maximus in Rome. Inevitably at that time, he also highlighted the community feeling that would create such a building between competitors and spectators:   
 As in ancient Greece, the elite and highly experienced men are chosen from among the masses of the nation. An entire nation in sympathetic astonishment sits in the ranks. Spectators and contestants go into one unit.
The idea of organising Paneuropean track and field athletics contests was perhaps inspired by the Panathenes, but Speer's stadium was stylistically more committed to ancient Rome than the Greeks; with its huge vaulted base and the arched exterior façade, it was more like the Circus Maximus than the style of the Athens Panathinaiko Stadium. Again a Nazi building represented a mixture of Greek and Roman elements, mostly involving the latter. But Hitler did not want such a stadium to be the centre of German athletics. The restored Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens had been used for the Olympic Games in 1896 and 1906. In 1936 the games were held on the Reichsportfeld in Berlin, but Hitler insisted that all future games in the German stadium should take place after 1940, when the games were planned in Tokyo. This stadium was much larger than Berlin's Olympiastadion, which had a capacity of 115,000 spectators. Hitler's assumed that after victory in the war the subjugated world would have had no choice but to send all athletes to Germany every four years for the Olympic Games. Pangermanic games should be of equal importance with a worldwide competition, in which the winners would have received their reward from the Führer, surrounded by loyalists of the party, who were to be placed in the straight transverse axis of the stadium, referring to ancient gods.
Deutsches StadionHitler, as late as July 6, 1942, enthused about the prospects of the Reichsparteitagsgelände and proposed Deutsches Stadion:
The Party Rally has, however, been not only a quite unique occasion in the life of the NSDAP but also in many respects a valuable preparation for war. Each Rally requires the organisation of no fewer than four thousand special trains. As these trains stretched as far as Munich and Halle, the railway authorities were given first-class practice in the military problem of handling mass troop transportation. Nor will the Rally lose its significance in the future. Indeed, I have given orders that the venue of the Rally is to be enlarged to accommodate a minimum of two million for the future—as compared to the million to a million and a half to-day. The German Stadium which has been constructed at Nuremberg, and of which Horth has drawn two magnificent pictures, accommodates four hundred thousand people and is on a scale which has no comparison anywhere on earth.
Trevor-Roper (565-6) Hitler's Table Talk
Dutzendteich Lake Station
Opened on December 1, 1871 by the Actiengesellschaft der Bavarian Eastern Railways, the nearby Dutzendteich Lake Station accommodated tens of thousands of Party Rally participants. The first major renovation took place from March 14 to September 5, 1934, in the course of the Nazi party rallies that had been taking place since 1933, and included the construction of a 400 metre-long house platform and a central platform, two underpasses (the eastern one with direct access to the Zeppelin grandstand) and this standing reception building, shown then and now, designed by Fritz Limpert after having demolished the first station building in order to better cope with the visiting crowds during the Nazi party rallies. In addition, an underground tunnel was built from the train station to the catacombs of the Zeppelin grandstand. It served for the supply lines, food and for the ϟϟ-Schutzstaffel, which had a special lounge under the speaker's platform in case there had been a riot at the party congresses. One would then have stepped out and protected Hitler.
Through the tunnel they could get close to the pulpit unnoticed. When the S2 and the new S-Bahn station Nürnberg-Dutzendteich started operating on November 22, 1992, the old unused platforms were removed over the following years and the former reception building was converted into
an inn, the Gaststätte "Bahnhof Dutzendteich." Recently the Inselkammer brewery family (who own majority shares in the Augustiner brewery) has sold the station to the city of Nuremberg which intends to turn the old stop into an information centre for visitors having originally intended to construct a new building near the Zeppelin field for the purpose. The Inselkammers 
experienced their greatest boom after the war with Franz Inselkammer ending up buying various plots of land around the Platzl in downtown Munich in 1953, as well as setting up the adjoining restaurant and theatre, although almost all the buildings had been destroyed by the war. In investing heavily in his brewery, he established the world's first hydro-automatic brewhouse in 1957.

Near the grounds was the Langwasser camp which could serve 200,000 visitors from the SA, ϟϟ, HJ, and the RAD. This remaining water tower was built in 1936 according to Speer's plan. Initially, the grounds were used to accommodate those attending the Nazi Party Rallies, with large tent camps set up in what is now the Langwasser district. However, with the onset of the war and the cessation of the rallies, this infrastructure was repurposed as an internment camp (Ilag) for enemy civilians, but it was quickly converted into a Stalag, a German PoW camp, accommodating a peak of approximately 150,000 prisoners. In 1939, the Wehrmacht began building a large prisoner of war camp on these grounds, a facility that continued to operate until the liberation of Nuremberg by American troops in April 1945. This camp imprisoned tens of thousands of soldiers from the British Empire as well as from Poland, the Benelux countries, France, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Italy, and the United States, most of whom were compelled to perform forced labour in Nuremberg and the Middle Franconia region. The treatment of these prisoners varied greatly, with some, like Yugoslav officers, receiving relatively humane treatment, whilst others, particularly Soviet and Italian prisoners, suffered massive and violent abuse. The harsh living and working conditions at the camp led to the deaths of several thousand prisoners of war, who were buried in mass graves at the city’s Südfriedhof cemetery​​​​. These prisoners represented various nationalities from the countries invaded by Germany, such as Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. British soldiers, as well as later American GIs, were generally held in other camps, mostly in the eastern part of the Reich, and only came to Nuremberg towards the end of the war when the eastern Stalags were evacuated in anticipation of the advancing Red Army. 
With the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the situation of PoWs in German detention changed dramatically. Millions of Red Army soldiers were captured, and many of these, along with other PoWs, were used as forced labor in the German war economy. The camp's role evolved further when it began functioning as a Dulag (Durchgangslager or transit camp) due to Nuremberg's significance as a railroad hub. Stalag XIII D was officially reestablished in April 1943 and, along with the Oflags (camps for officers) that were also on the site, suffered heavy damage during an Allied air raid in August 1943. Despite the destruction of two-thirds of the wooden barracks, only two Soviet soldiers were reported as casualties in this attack. However, many PoWs fell victim to aerial warfare against Nuremberg during their work assignments or other duties in the city area​​.  As the war neared its end and the Allied forces closed in on Germany from the east and west in late 1944, Stalag XIII D and Oflag 73 became destinations for increasingly chaotic evacuation transports from other German PoW camps. This included the transfer of inmates and staff from the Luftwaffenlager III Sagan in Silesia, which housed approximately 6,000 US and British crew members. The camp's population included a diverse range of nationalities, totaling 29,550 PoWs, including 8,680 officers​​.  The liberation of the Nuremberg camps began with evacuation marches on April 12, 1945, leading to Stalag Moosburg in Upper Bavaria. The Americans freed the Nuremberg camps on April 16, 1945, finding approximately 13,000 quarantined PoWs for typhoid fever, along with Serbian officers and the staff of the PoW hospital, most of whom were also Serbs. The bulk of the former inmates were liberated on April 29 northwest of Moosburg​. ​

former ϟϟ-BarracksStanding in front of the former ϟϟ-Barracks,  built by architect Franz Ruff between 1937 and 1939 on the western outskirts of the Party Rally Grounds. Although referred to by the Nazis as the "Gateway to the Rally Grounds," it was not actually used until after the start of the war- never during the years of the rallies. Its construction demonstrates how the ϟϟ sought to be represented in Nuremberg by its own units right next to the rally grounds. In 1936 no barracks were planned for the Nazi rallies but the ϟϟ, having set up the guard service for the grounds, desired one and in so doing expand its responsibilities and to set up its own troops. Thus in March 1936 ϟϟ-Gruppenführer Ernst-Heinrich Schmauser began planning its construction with an area on Frankenstraße chosen the next year. By July Reichsführer ϟϟ Himmler commissioned Speer to submit blueprints in three months. After an inspection of the site by Himmler and Speer and Willy Liebel, the mayor of Nuremberg, the final plan was decided and Ruff was commissioned as architect whilst remaining responsible for the neighbouring Reichsparteitagsland. Hitler himself interfered in its planning, ordering in September 1937 for an immediate start with accommodation ready by 1938, although the work was not started until October 20. The topping-out ceremony of the main building was celebrated on June 2, 1939 and by 1940 the building complex was largely completed. Officially described as ϟϟ accommodation and never barracks, the main building alone had a thousand rooms. Above the main entrance hung a large reichsadler and the ceilings were covered with mosaics designed by Max Körner whilst the floor of the festival hall consisted of marble mosaics in the form of hooked crossbars. This was one of the Nazis' largest barracks buildings erected and the entire complex consisted of the central main building with a “Portal of Honour”, and two side wings, both built around a courtyard, as well as several additional buildings.  former ϟϟ-Barracks then now
During the war radio operators for the Waffen ϟϟ were trained here, some of whom took part in the siege of Leningrad. During the war radio operators were trained for different units. In addition, the c Barracks Nachrichten-Ersatzabteilung (Nuremberg) had its seat here. In May 1940, prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp came to the barracks for construction and other work. Through 1944-45, a small section of the building was used to provide accommodation for roughly an hundred prisoners from the Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps. When Nuremberg was conquered by the Americans in April 1945, German troops from the ϟϟ barracks attempted a final resistance although, apart from bullet holes at the main building, the barracks were scarcely damaged during the war. In April the building complex was renamed Merrell Barracks after a fallen soldier of the 3rd American infantry division and the empty buildings held foreign forced labourers. Today it houses the Federal Department for the Recognition of Foreign [sic] Refugees.
Nazi Nuremberg then and now

 Click for Nuremberg old town

 

 de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog Reichsparteitagsgelände Autoren der Wikimedia-Projekte 44–56 minutes  The area in the southeast of Nuremberg where the Nazi Party rallies took place from 1933 to 1938 was called the Nazi Party Rally Grounds . The overall design for the design of the site came from Albert Speer in the basic concept and in detail from Walter Brugmann , who also planned the implementation. It covers a total area of ​​over 16.5 km². The area stretched between the Zehnteich train station , the old Tiergarten and in the southeast to Moorenbrunnfeld . [1] [2] Some of the colossal buildings were fully or partially completed and are still there today. The Nazi Party Rally Grounds Documentation Center has been providing on-site information since 2001 . Model of the Nazi party rally grounds at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 Map section of the Nazi party rally grounds around 1940 The area before 1933: local recreation area Edit  In the 19th century, a local recreation area developed in the southeast of Nuremberg around the large and small dozen ponds for the residents of the rapidly growing city. There had been a bathing establishment on the north side of the dozen pond since 1876. By the turn of the century, a beach promenade was set up at the ponds. In 1899, a hotelier had a restaurant built in place of an earlier inn, the Park-Café Wanner, located directly on the bank, which was destroyed in the Second World War . [3]  The Bavarian anniversary, state, industrial, commercial and art exhibition took place in 1906 in the area between the Zehnteich and today's Victims of Fascism Square . The northern part of the exhibition grounds was named Luitpoldhain in honor of the then Prince Regent Luitpold .  According to the building file available in the Nuremberg city archives, the office of the 1906 exhibition applied to the city magistrate on January 14, 1905 for the construction of the lighthouse at the Zehnteich. It was an exhibition contribution for the Josef Houzer company, a specialist shop for chimney construction and combustion systems. The ensemble was completed on June 22, 1906. During the exhibition, the tower, with its height of 15 meters, served as a viewing platform during the day, and spotlights installed there illuminated the area at night. On December 30, 1907, the lighthouse was sold for further use to the city of Nuremberg, which had an elevator installed.  The buildings erected for the exhibition were demolished except for the lighthouse and the machine hall. After some renovations to an event hall, the machine hall was named Luitpoldhalle . According to a newspaper article in the city chronicle, the city administration planned to demolish the lighthouse in 1925. However, these plans were not pursued any further until the site was chosen for the construction of the Congress Hall as part of the Nazi party rally grounds after the NSDAP came to power. The lighthouse was in the way and was blown up on October 29, 1936 during soil compaction work by the 1st company of the 45 Neu-Ulm Pioneer Battalion . Today the torso of the congress hall stands there. [4]  The Nuremberg Zoo was opened in the area between Luitpoldhain and Dürreteich in 1912. In 1939 it was moved to Schmausenbuck because it stood in the way of the expansion plans for the party conference grounds.      Der Dutzendteich mit dem Park-Café Wanner, Postkarte um 1915      The dozen pond with the Wanner Park Café, postcard around 1915      Die spätere Luitpoldhalle als Maschinenhalle der Landesausstellung, Postkarte von 1906      The later Luitpoldhalle as the machine hall of the state exhibition, postcard from 1906      Der 1936 gesprengte Leuchtturm am Dutzendteich, Postkarte ca. 1914      The lighthouse at the Zehnteich, which was blown up in 1936, postcard around 1914      Reichsparteitag der NSDAP, 1927      Nazi Party Rally, 1927      Die Ehrenhalle im Luitpoldhain, 2010      The Hall of Honor in Luitpoldhain, 2010  From 1923 onwards, at the suggestion of Nuremberg Mayor Hermann Luppe, a sports and recreation area with the Bauhaus-style octagonal municipal stadium was built in the area beyond the dozen pond (architect: Otto Ernst Schweizer ). This offered space for 37,000 spectators, including a covered grandstand for 2,500 spectators. Part of the site was also a meadow where Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin landed with the Zeppelin LZ 6 (often incorrectly referred to as “Z III”) on August 28, 1909 and which has been called Zeppelin Field ever since . As a job creation measure, a municipal sports and recreation area was created based on concepts from the city garden director Alfred Hensel . The “Turnwiese”, a sports field surrounded on three sides by stands, was created on the actual field. [5] The overall design of the sports park received international recognition, including a gold medal for planning at the 1928 Olympic Games . Encouraged by this, Nuremberg applied to host the 1936 Olympic Games . However, the application was dropped in favor of Berlin .  Due to the numerous facilities and the convenient transport connections, the site became a popular location for major national events, including the NSDAP party conferences of 1927 and 1929. Between 1928 and 1930, a memorial to the fallen, the so-called Hall of Honor , was built on the eastern side of the grove to commemorate them to the dead of the First World War (architect: Fritz Mayer ). The site between 1933 and 1945: The buildings Edit Luitpol Arena Edit The Luitpoldarena 1942 Commemorative event for the 16 “ martyrs of the movement ” during the Hitler putsch, 1934 on the Luitpoldhain  From 1933 onwards, the Luitpoldhain park was replaced by a strictly structured parade area, the Luitpoldarena with an area of ​​84,000 m². A speaker's stand was built opposite the Hall of Honor. The fallen soldiers of the Hitler putsch of 1923 were commemorated in the Hall of Honor itself. The direct connection between the stands and the hall consisted of a wide granite path.  The SA and SS marches with up to 150,000 people took place in this ensemble during the Nazi party rallies. The central “relic” was the blood flag , which was allegedly carried by the putschists during the Hitler Putsch. At the consecration of the blood flag, new standards of SA and SS units were “consecrated” by touching the blood flag. Luitpoldhalle Edit  The Luitpoldhalle was 180 × 50 meters in size and could accommodate up to 16,000 people. The party congress took place there as part of the Reich Party rallies . Since the playful Art Nouveau facade of the hall, which was built in 1906, did not match the appearance of the Luitpoldarena, it was covered with a strict backdrop in 1935, which gave the entrance a monumental impression. In the interior, too, flags and curtains were used to draw the audience's attention away from the architecture and towards the speakers, namely Adolf Hitler and other party leaders.  For the 1935 Nazi Party Rally, Hitler ordered an organ from Oscar Walcker at short notice for the opening ceremony . [6] Within a few days, the organ, which had just been completed in the Ludwigsburg factory for the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin-Mariendorf , was installed at the front of the hall behind a huge red swastika curtain. [7] [8] It was played at the opening ceremony and, among other things, on September 15, 1935 - before Göring read out the Nuremberg racial laws here - with the hymn We step to pray . [7] After the Nazi party rally, it was transferred to Berlin-Mariendorf, the place for which it was designed.  For the Nazi party rally in 1936, the Walcker company built a new organ with 5 manuals and 220 stops , which was briefly the largest in Europe. [9]  It is said to have burned down after bombing by the Royal Air Force , as did the enormous food reserves stored here for the Nazi superiors and the furniture stored with them. [10] The damaged hall was blown up and demolished in 1950. The area is now used as a parking lot. [11]      Bildtafel zum „Blutschutzgesetz“ (1935)      Plate on the “Blood Protection Act” (1935)      Die erste Walcker-Orgel an ihrem heutigen Standort      The first Walcker organ in its current location  Congress Hall Edit Adolf Hitler with the architects Albert Speer (left) and Franz Ruff (right) in front of drawings and models of the congress hall, around 1934/35  The congress hall is - after Prora - the second largest surviving National Socialist monumental building in Germany and is a listed building . The design with a cantilevered roof comes from the Nuremberg architects Ludwig and Franz Ruff . The hall was planned as a conference center for the NSDAP with space for 50,000 people. Of the intended height of around 70 meters, only 39 were reached. Model of the Theater of Marcellus in the Museo della Civiltà Romana , Rome  Most of the building is made of bricks ; The facade was clad with large granite slabs “from all regions of the empire”. The U-shaped building ends on the northeast side facing the large dozen pond with two end buildings. The foundation stone was laid in 1935, but the building remained unfinished; in particular, there was no longer any roofing. The dimensions of the torso: U-shape outside 240 × 200 m, inside 175 × 155 m, eastern head structures 280 × 52…70 m. With their U-shape, Ludwig and Franz Ruff clearly referred to the ancient Theater of Marcellus in Rome was built around the years of Christ's birth on behalf of Emperor Augustus . Even the two side head structures are cited. The Marcellus Theater was the model for the Colosseum , which is also clearly cited by Ludwig and Franz Ruff in the facade design. [12] In 2003, a photovoltaic system with 295 kWp was installed on the roof of the Nuremberg Congress Hall. The city of Nuremberg generates around 300,000 kWh of green electricity per year with this system. [13]  The plan to use the congress hall as alternative accommodation for the Nuremberg Opera House, which is in need of renovation, led to controversial discussions . [14]      Grundsteinlegung beim Reichsparteitag 1935      Laying of the foundation stone at the Nazi party rally in 1935      Kongresshalle (2017)      Southeast view, in the foreground the large dozen pond, 2017      Blick vom Luitpoldhain auf die Kongresshalle, Luftbild (2018)      View from Luitpoldhain to the congress hall, aerial view (2018)      Vogelperspektive von Südwesten, 2016      Bird's eye view from southwest, 2016      Westansicht, 2008      West view, 2008      Arkadengang, 2010      Innenhof, 2012      Courtyard, 2012      Blick in die Große Säulenhalle, 2019      View of the Great Hypostyle Hall, 2019      Blick über die Kongresshalle, 2021      View over the congress hall, 2021  House of Culture Edit  The House of Culture was planned opposite the congress hall , but construction never began. Big street Edit The Great Street, 2004  The construction of the Große Straße as a parade street and central axis of the site was completed in 1939. It faces the medieval imperial castle in a northwesterly direction . This was intended to create a historical connection to the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Diet in Nuremberg. However, it could never be used for party conferences because no such events took place after the start of the war.  The actual road is two kilometers long (1.5 km has been completed) and 40 meters wide. To the south of the dozen ponds it is flanked by grandstand steps, making the width in this area approximately 60 meters. Granite slabs in two different colors were laid on a concrete base. The street was structured with the colors light and dark gray to make it easier for the groups marching there to maintain alignment. The light gray, square plates have an edge length of 1.2 m, which corresponded to the length of two Prussian gore steps . This should also make it easier to maintain formation during parades. Until 1964 it served as a runway for the US Army, which operated DHC-2 “Beaver” fixed-wing aircraft and Sikorsky S-58 helicopters there. German stadium Edit  In order to create a venue for the planned National Socialist Fighting Games , Albert Speer designed the German Stadium . With a floor area of ​​540×445 and a height of 82 meters, it was planned as “the largest stadium in the world” (Albert Speer). It should accommodate over 405,000 spectators. For comparison: the world's largest stadium in Prague has 250,000 seats. The horseshoe-shaped floor plan opening onto the Great Street was inspired by classical models, including the Stadium of Olympia and the Circus Maximus in Rome. In front of the stadium, a forecourt measuring 360 × 180 meters was planned, from which a 150-meter-wide staircase would lead down to Große Straße.  As with the other monumental buildings on the party conference grounds, financing should not play a role. Joseph Goebbels wrote about this in his diary: “ The model for the German Stadium is wonderful. The Führer doesn't want to talk about money. Build, build! It's already paid for. Frederick the Great didn't ask for money when he built Sanssouci . “In order to test the visibility and different angles of inclination of the spectator stands, the Hoher Berg ( 49° 34′ 3″  N , 11° 34′ 27″  E) was built on a slope near Hirschbach-Oberklausen) in the Hersbrucker Alb (popularly also Stadionberg ) a 1:1 scale model. In one and a half years of construction, three wooden stands with a capacity of 42,000 seats and an elevator station were built. The concrete foundations are still there and have been a listed building since 2002. An information board reminds us of the history. [15]  After the foundation stone was laid on September 9, 1937 as part of the Nazi party rally, excavation of the construction pit began, which was not yet completed by the start of the war in 1939. During the war, work was stopped and the excavation pit, which was up to ten meters deep, filled with groundwater . The resulting lake is called Silver Lake and is poisoned with hydrogen sulfide because of the silver buck that is in the immediate vicinity . The Silberbuck itself is a mountain of rubble and waste that grew up to 35 meters high between 1946 and 1962. Its composition - from rubble from the bombed-out old town to household waste to critical industrial waste - and the fact that it stands in the groundwater-flooded foundation pit make the lake and the mountain, which is now green, a heavy legacy. [16]      Speer und Hitler bei einem Besuch der Versuchstribünenanlage. (März 1938)      Speer and Hitler visiting the experimental stands. www-zeit-de.translate.goog Guerillakunst in Nürnberg: Mal mir keinen Regenbogen By Andreas Thamm , Nuremberg 14–17 minutes On a harsh autumnal night, six people make their way on foot and on bicycles to the southeastern edge of the city of Nuremberg. They have been preparing for this moment for less than two weeks, using encrypted communication to distribute tasks and arrange meeting points, to carry out experiments with paints and to hide their paint rollers. Five liters of paint in each backpack. The artists move in a star shape towards the stone stand. “According to my calculations, we should have been finished in five minutes and gone in 15,” remembers one who was there. He would like to be called Arquus here. "In the end it easily took 40 minutes. It was dark, we were scared, we were freezing, it was raining." When Nuremberg woke up the next morning, October 28th, it had eight colored stripes richer. The people who will later be in editorial offices and offices are scrolling through Facebook with the rest of their breakfast sandwich in their molars. At 8:06 a.m., photographer Peter Kunz published the first photo of the Rainbow Prelude. An anonymous collective of artists gave the Zeppelin Grandstand, one of the numerous relics of Nazi architecture on the Nuremberg Nazi party rally grounds, the symbol of the Pride movement. The photo of the rainbow over the leader's cockpit is shared widely and sparks a controversial conversation in the city - about art, intervention and the unpleasant buildings. Die Gruppe Regenbogen-Präludium, benannt nach ihrem ersten Werk, hat in dieser Nacht ein mächtiges Zeichen gesetzt. Und zwar nicht nur, weil der Regenbogen auf der Speerschen Monumentalästhetik einen ersehnten Kontrast herstellt. Nicht nur, weil das Symbol der Vielfalt den pilgernden Neonazis eine Selfiekulisse wegnahm – und weil im Zuge dessen darüber gesprochen werden konnte, dass Nazis diesen Ort als Selfiekulisse hernehmen. Nicht nur, weil sich die Gruppe kommunikationsstrategisch klug verhielt und fortan im digitalen Echoraum Lorbeeren erntete. Sondern auch und vor allem, weil die Aktionskünstler sich eines Ortes ermächtigten, der die Stadt seit Jahrzehnten hilflos macht, und dafür einen Zeitpunkt wählten, der dem temporären Werk die maximale Aufmerksamkeit garantierte. Weil sie die Forderung der Stadt nach temporärer Kunst an diesem Ort maßgenau erfüllten und genau damit die indirekte Auftraggeberin gegen sich aufbrachten. Die Geschichte vom Regenbogen-Präludium ist auch deshalb so erzählenswert, weil an diesem Tag, zu diesem Zeitpunkt, eine große Geschichte endet und mehrere kleine Geschichten beginnen, die etwas über das Kulturleben in deutschen Städten mit großen schöngeistigen Ambitionen aussagen. Der 28. Oktober ist auch der Tag, an dem die Kulturstiftung der Länder via Livestream verkündet, welche deutsche Stadt sich 2025 Kulturhauptstadt Europas nennen darf. Vier Jahre lang haben zuletzt noch vier deutsche Städte um Konzepte gerungen, die die Konkurrenz ausstechen. An diesem Regenbogen-Mittwoch gilt Nürnberg, zumindest in Nürnberg, als aussichtsreiche Kandidatin, insbesondere wegen der Verquickung von unvermeidlich düsterer Vergangenheit und elegant hinbehaupteter Zukunftsfähigkeit. "Past Forward" hieß das Motto der Bewerbung. Das Liegenschaftsamt erstattet umgehend Anzeige Der Nürnberger Fotograf Peter Kunz hat das Regenbogen-Präludium dokumentiert. © Peter Kunz Inzwischen ist auch das schon wieder Vergangenheit. Chemnitz hat gewonnen, Nürnberg hat – wie auch Hildesheim, Magdeburg und Hannover – verloren. Zuletzt berichtete nun die Süddeutsche Zeitung über ein dubioses Beraterwesen rund um Kulturhauptstadtbewerbungsprozesse, es geht um die Verquickung von – oder zumindest um eine zu enge Verbindung zwischen – Jury- und Beratertätigkeiten, es riecht stark nach Günstlingswirtschaft, bei der sich die immer gleichen Planer in wechselnden Positionen das Prädikat zuschanzen. Als eine wesentliche Zeugin der Anklage tritt die Nürnberger Bürgermeisterin und Kulturdezernentin Julia Lehner (CSU) auf. Auch ihr sei jener Mattijs Maussen, der schlussendlich Chemnitz entscheidend beraten hatte, vom späteren Jurymitglied Jiří Suchánek bei einem Besuch der beiden in Nürnberg als bezahlter Berater angetragen worden. "Klare Absicht des Besuches war die Erlangung eines entsprechenden Vertrages." Das gilt es vielleicht im Hinterkopf zu haben, wenn man sich dem kurz zuvor veröffentlichten Abschlussbericht der Jury widmet, in dem Nürnberg nicht wirklich gut wegkommt. Man wird, einmal misstrauisch, das Gefühl nicht los, dass potenziell alles kritisierenswert ist, wenn man es denn nun kritisieren will, ob die Bewerbung des einen nun zu handgestrickt und provinziell ist oder die der anderen zu glattgebügelt und ortlos. Und dennoch gibt es da einen Punkt, der im Fall Regenbogen zusammenzucken lässt: Denn im Bericht wird unter anderem die unzureichende Ausführung eines partizipativen Ansatzes für die Um- und Neugestaltung des Reichsparteitagsgeländes bemängelt, "the limited elaboration of a participatory approach". Auch wenn es am Urteil der Jury – aus welchen Gründen auch immer – nichts mehr geändert hätte: Am Tag der Entscheidung bekommt die Stadt Nürnberg also eine hervorragende Chance, zumindest diesen Teil der Ablehnung Lügen zu strafen – und tut sich schwer. Zwar schreibt das Bewerbungsbüro um 16.08 Uhr auf Facebook: "Gerade am heutigen Tag (...) ist diese Aktion ein wichtiges Statement, das wir unterstützen." Die Stadtverwaltung an sich lässt sich aber von lobenden Worten aus einem gerade obsolet gewordenen Büro nicht aus der Spur bringen. Das Liegenschaftsamt erstattet umgehend Anzeige gegen unbekannt "aus versicherungstechnischen Gründen und zur Wahrung der städtischen Interessen". Das Hochbauamt lässt die wasserlösliche Farbe umgehend entfernen. Drei Tage später zeugen nur noch noch lilafarbene Flecken vom Regenbogen-Präludium. Und Nürnberg erscheint in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung als Partnerin, die mit links gratuliert und mit rechts Watschen verteilt. Julia Lehner, die Kulturbürgermeisterin, stand in dem Moment, als sie den Regenbogen zum ersten Mal sah, noch unter dem Eindruck der gescheiterten Kulturhauptstadtbewerbung, wie sie zwei Wochen später am Telefon erzählt. Sie sei beeindruckt gewesen: "Ein Gebäude, das einen sonst erschlägt, ist plötzlich sympathischer dahergekommen." Zu den Konzepten der Kulturhauptstadt hätte der Regenbogen fantastisch gepasst, findet sie. Allein, sie hätten halt nicht gefragt, die Künstlerinnen, sie hätten sich nicht mit einem Antrag ans Kulturreferat gewandt. "Die Veränderung eines Gebäudes, das unter Denkmalschutz steht", sagt Lehner, "bedarf der Genehmigung. Das sind einfach die Spielregeln." Tatsächlich fallen weder die Anzeige noch die Säuberung in ihre Verantwortlichkeit. Andere Ämter, andere Abläufe. Sie hat die Gruppe zum Gespräch eingeladen, es ist von einer möglichen "Verstetigung" der Arbeit die Rede. Regenbogen-Sprecher Arquus schließt den Dialog nicht aus, sagt aber auch: "Das funktioniert nur, wenn es auf Augenhöhe stattfindet, und das geht nicht, solange diese Anzeige, die ein Antragsdelikt ist, im Raum steht. Die Stadt könnte die sofort zurücknehmen." Lehner sieht sich diesbezüglich nicht in der Pflicht: "Ich kann kein Recht beugen. Dass nach einer Anzeige auch ein Strafantrag gestellt wird, ist nicht gesagt. Das muss man auseinanderhalten." Solange die juristischen Fragen schwebend sind, könne man mit ihr ja auch anonym in Kontakt treten. Wenn es nach der Künstlergruppe geht, soll sich am Diskurs aber nicht nur Kunst und Verwaltung, sondern die ganze Stadtgesellschaft beteiligen. Über die Verstetigung des Regenbogens an der Tribüne könnte beispielsweise eine Bürgerbefragung abgehalten werden. Dort ginge es dann eben auch um die Frage, was schwerer wiegt, der Schutz von porösem Naturstein, Muschelkalk, der laut Nürnberger Hochbauamt durch die eindringende Farbe noch größeren Schaden hätte nehmen können (deshalb die rasche Entfernung, Kostenpunkt um die 5.000 Euro). Oder um Ideen, zuvorderst die, dass das Reichsparteitagsgelände zwar gewiss ein bedeutender Denkort, aber als sakrosanktes Denkmal nach deutschen Statuten eventuell eine ziemliche Fehlbesetzung ist. Ein Steinmetz und CSD-Vorsitzender bringt noch eine Wende An dieser Stelle erfährt die Geschichte um den Nürnberger Regenbogen allerdings noch eine Wendung. Wenn er an Gott glauben würde, sagt Arquus, würde er Bastian Brauwer eine göttliche Fügung nennen. Brauwer ist Vorsitzender des CSD Nürnberg, aber auch Steinmetzmeister, staatlich geprüfter Restaurator und Steintechniker. Er hat sich kundig gemacht, welche Farbe an der Zeppelintribüne verwendet wurde. Die Antwort: keine Farbe, sondern selbst angerührter Tapetenkleister, der, so Brauwer, mit warmem Wasser und Seife ganz leicht zu entfernen gewesen wäre. In einem offenen Brief erklärt er ausführlich, warum die Begründung der Stadt für die Hochdruckentfernung aus fachlicher Sicht "schlicht falsch" sei. Und schreibt: "Das mir beschriebene und auf Bildern sichtbare, offensichtlich äußerst unprofessionelle Reinigen mittels Hochdruckreiniger zerstört nachhaltig die Gesteinsoberfläche des doch eigentlich denkmalgeschützten Gebäudes und begünstigt damit dessen Verfall." Die Stadt selbst beschädigt mit ihrer Rettungsaktion das diskutable Denkmal? Das klingt jetzt wirklich nicht kulturhauptstadtwürdig. Nein, sagt wiederum die Stadt, der Druck des Reinigers sei erstens minimal gewesen. Zweitens hätten die Künstler für eine unschädliche Anwendung des Kleisters eine Trennlage verwenden müssen, was offenbar nicht geschah. "Wäre eine Trennlage aufgebracht worden", teilt ein Sprecher der Stadt mit, "wäre die Farbe vermutlich nicht eingedrungen." Drittens dürfe Kunst an den NS-Bauten eben immer nur temporär sein, ein zeitlich nicht fixierter Begriff – dieser Linie folgt die Stadt schon eine Weile. "Jede Generation soll selbst die Chance haben, sich dem Bauwerk in seiner Dimension zu stellen. Dabei geht es nicht um formalen Denkmalschutz, sondern um Reversibilität und Substanzerhalt." Die aktuelle temporäre Kunst zugunsten der zukünftigen einzuschränken, klingt nun äußerst generationengerecht und nachhaltig, es bringt aber auch eine gewisse Starrheit mit sich, vielleicht sogar einen Stillstand. Nach aktuellen, offiziellen Plänen sollen Zeppelinfeld und -tribüne für rund 85 Millionen Euro saniert werden. Ein multimedialer "Lernort der Geschichte" soll entstehen. Der sieht allerdings nicht viel anders aus als der Status quo, wenn er auch seine Besucherinnen nicht mehr durch eventuell herabfallende Kalkplatten gefährden würde. Doch genau hier wollte die Gruppe ja ansetzen, beim Auftritt des Ortes, der so – unverändert – doch vielleicht vor allem die Botschaft der Nazis vermittelt. At the same time, the history of the art campaign continues. In January, the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts wants to take another look at the matter with experts . “The Rainbow Prelude could have been a prelude, a prelude – for further art on the site, for civil society debates with a strong connection to the here and now,” says the announcement of the symposium with the beautiful title “Full pressure into the Postludium”. The city of Nuremberg, on the other hand, is retreating: "The rapid removal of artistic work shows a fear of discourses that evade the interpretive sovereignty of city politics." On December 16, the Rainbow Group released a manifesto. There they suggest creating a “free space for artists” “in the immediate vicinity of the Hitler stand,” “a morphological and fluid form that promotes the encounter between art, political education and civil society in Nuremberg as a place "strengthens and perpetuates special responsibility". It sounds typically vague at first, but it doesn't have to be if the city society gets involved and gets involved in the plans for a self-managed artists' house, as the group has in mind. www-nordbayern-de.translate.goog Die Zeppelin-Tribüne bröckelt Klaus Tscharnke, dpa 4–5 minutes The Zeppelin stand is crumbling Klaus Tscharnke, dpa September 25, 2011, 12:50 p.m The Zeppelin stand is crumbling © Daut - It once served as a pompous backdrop for Nazi marches during the former Nazi party rallies - the facade of the Nuremberg Zeppelin Grandstand is now crumbling. Cultural advisor Julia Lehner is therefore calling for rapid renovation – with the help of the federal and state governments. The decay of the Zeppelin field in pictures According to the findings of Nuremberg cultural advisor Julia Lehner (CSU), one of the central Nazi legacies in Nuremberg, the Zeppelin Grandstand, is in danger of falling into disrepair without millions in investment. The facades of the monumental building are crumbling and the interior of the massive grandstand has been closed to groups of visitors for years. Without an early renovation, further damage to the historic building on the former Nazi party rally grounds is to be feared, said Lehner in an interview with the dpa news agency. The ancient model of the Zeppelin grandstand, built between 1935 and 1937, was the Pergamon Altar. Lehner further said that the problem was that part of the interior of the stands was filled with rubble; this puts increasing pressure on the masonry. “The question is how long the walls can withstand the pressure,” she said. The material came from the two earlier towers that were blown up in the 1960s. In addition, rows of trees planted later would have changed the earlier appearance of the Zeppelin stand. “However, we are not concerned with a perfect reconstruction of the Zeppelin grandstand, but rather with careful maintenance,” emphasized Lehner. She could well imagine preserving the traces of the post-war period – such as the sprayed graffiti, she said. “The concept of a city working group is to restore the grandstand in such a way that the role of the entire area in the Nazi propaganda machine becomes understandable,” said Lehner. The former “Golden Hall” inside the stands should also be reopened to visitors. “We want to demystify all the legends surrounding the Golden Hall,” said the politician. The cultural officer expects renovation costs of up to 70 million euros, which the city cannot bear on its own. Lehner, who wants to present a renovation concept to the city's cultural committee on October 7th, is hoping for financial support from the state and federal government. “The Zeppelin Grandstand is a national historical heritage,” she emphasized. As soon as the concept has been approved by the Nuremberg city council, corresponding funding applications will be submitted to the Free State and the Federal Government. According to them, around 200,000 people visit the grandstand area every year. The documentation center at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds has significantly increased interest in it. Various Nazi associations marched in front of the stand during the Nazi Party rallies. 0 comments In order to post a comment yourself, you must log in or register beforehand . All of this shows various things: On the one hand, it becomes clear that an application for a Capital of Culture does not create a cultural metropolis - and perhaps the importance of such an application is overestimated anyway if you take a closer look at the award procedure. But it also shows that even without the final shower of money and attention, it can set in motion processes that turn a city into a cultural city, processes of reflection and negotiation. Of course, it is not said that Nuremberg would have dismissed the rainbow as graffiti without previously raising awareness of art and intervention through its own application - but things are also mentioned in this text that suggest this suspicion. For the European Capital of Culture institution, this means that it has a responsibility to be attractive to applicant cities through a fair and transparent process. Without the prospect of success, at least the Nuremberg Rainbow would never have existed like this - with this kind of attention. Page navigation Home page (March 1938)      Betonfundamente des Stadionmodells bei Oberklausen, 2007      Concrete foundations of the stadium model near Oberklausen, 2007      Der Silbersee, die einstige Baugrube des Deutschen Stadions, 2004      The Silbersee, the former construction pit of the German Stadium, 2004  March field Edit Remains of the Märzfeld foundation and display board at Montessoristraße 56, 2008  The name Märzfeld is an allusion to the Roman god of war Mars and the Mars Field in Rome originally dedicated to him, as well as a reminder of the reintroduction of compulsory military service in March 1935. The area was intended to provide space for the Wehrmacht 's show maneuvers during the Nazi party rallies. It had a size of 955 × 611 meters, which corresponds to around 58 hectares and was therefore larger than 80 football fields. Construction began in 1938 but was never completed. Framed by 24 towers, 11 were completed, it was intended to give the impression of monumental fortress architecture. Grandstands for around 250,000 spectators were planned on the edges. On the central stand there was a group of colossal figures with a goddess of victory and warriors. Municipal stadium/Hitler Youth stadium Edit View over the municipal stadium to the Zeppelin main stand, around 1938  The municipal stadium, built between 1926 and 1928, was used as a venue for the so-called Hitler Youth Day at the Nazi party rallies . This usage also gives rise to the name used at the time. In reference to the German Stadium planned nearby, it was also often referred to as the Old Stadium .  The building, constructed in the Bauhaus style, did not fit in with the monumental buildings that were being built around it. In order to take some of the modern character away from the stadium, two wooden towers and a row of arcades were built on the back straight, which served as a backdrop for drummers, choirs and brass players.  After several renovations and modernizations, it now serves as a football stadium for 1. FC Nürnberg under the name Max Morlock Stadium . Zeppelin field and Zeppelin main grandstand Edit Zeppelin field with grandstand In the Zeppelin main stand: Golden Hall, 2015  On the Zeppelin meadow ( 49° 25′ 48.4″  N , 11° 7′ 25.1″  E) From 1933 onwards, events of the Reichswehr or Wehrmacht and the Reich Labor Service as well as the appeal of the political leaders of the NSDAP took place.  Between 1935 and 1937, the Zeppelin meadow was transformed into a parade area with stands based on a design by Albert Speer (1934), with the main Zeppelin stand built on the northeast side of the field becoming the dominant backdrop. It is the only completed structure on the Nazi party rally grounds.  The entire facility measured 362 × 378 meters, the actual Zeppelin field measured 290 × 312 meters. The interior area measures 312 × 285 meters, making it larger than 12 football fields.  In total, the area offered space for up to 320,000 people, 70,000 of whom were spectators in the stands. They were divided by 34 towers on which stood flagpoles and anti-aircraft searchlights . The impressive “dome of light” was created with over 150 very powerful spotlights, which shone vertically into the sky around the Zeppelin field.  On the north-eastern side of the field, the Zeppelin main stand was built in 1935 to replace a temporary wooden stand, measuring 360 meters long and 20 meters high. The ancient Pergamon Altar served as a model . Above the seats, a double row of pillars ran across the entire width, through which the grandstand reached its total height of 20 meters. It contains a hall approximately 8 m high and more than 300 m² in size, which is also called the Golden Hall because of the decorative ceiling mosaics. The two staircases that are accessible from the inside are also located there.  There were fire bowls on the two corner towers of the Zeppelin stand , one of which is now in the Golden Hall in the stand. The other was used as a children's paddling pool in the nearby stadium pool until 2008 , but is now in front of the main entrance to the stands. An additional raised section was created in the middle of the stand, which was reserved for special guests of honor. The central element was the speaker's pulpit from which Adolf Hitler conducted parades and spoke to the masses. As with the Luitpoldarena, the entire complex was oriented towards this point and thus towards the person of the “leader”, which gave it an altar-like character. The building, built between 1935 and 1937, is made of concrete, brick and limestone . During later renovations it became apparent that the shell limestone slabs are of different thicknesses. The protruding and receding processing of the bricks resulted in greater stability and simultaneous material savings for the more expensive veneers.      Reichsparteitag 1935. Der riesige Parteiadler ist aus Holz, die Bühne unvollständig.      Reich Party Rally 1935. The huge party eagle is made of wood, the stage is incomplete.      Zeppelinhaupttribüne mit Kolonnaden und Lichtdom beim großen Appell der Politischen Leiter, Reichsparteitag 1937      Zeppelin main stand with colonnades and dome of light at the great roll call of the political leaders , Nazi party rally 1937      Veranstaltung des Reichsarbeitsdienstes, Reichsparteitag 1937      Event of the Reich Labor Service , Reich Party Rally 1937      Großer Aufmarsch des Reichsarbeitsdienstes, Reichsparteitag 1937      Large march of the Reich Labor Service, Reich Party Rally 1937      Zeppelinfeld ca. 1938      Zeppelin field around 1938      Zeppelinhaupttribüne, 1938      Zeppelin main grandstand, 1938      Zeppelinhaupttribüne, 2018      Zeppelin main grandstand, 2018      Zeppelinhaupttribüne, 2021      Zeppelin main grandstand, 2021      Zeppelinhaupttribüne, 2009      Zeppelin main grandstand, 2009      Panorama des Zeppelinfeldes, 2017      Panorama of the Zeppelin field, 2017      Eingang zum Goldenen Saal, 2015      Entrance to the Golden Hall, 2015  The construction-era staging of a homogeneous monumental building, cleverly supported by photos, continues to this day, but the building was built step by step, even using older building materials. Wooden dummies were often used to create propaganda effects. The party conference of 1934 – with its propagandistic exaggeration through the Riefenstahl film Triumph of the Will – still shapes the collective image of these major events today. The performances shown by Hitler on a stand crowned with a 9 by 16 meter eagle, which was built on the western side stand of the Hensel sports field, are now often mistakenly associated with the Zeppelin stand, which, however, was only built in the following years. In the same year, Hitler commissioned Speer - with a view to the dummy-like wooden structures used - to plan a major expansion for a “temple city of the movement” on the site. In the following first “building program” in 1934/35, the wooden structures that had been tried and tested in previous years were still used. The greatest effort was made to ensure the bearing capacity of the field. In order to be able to use heavy military vehicles during parades on the Zeppelin field, which was created in the swampy area near the Zehnteich, the “unsustainable moorland” was partly replaced several meters deep. Behind and above the central building, a structure was created with another set of steps and another gigantic imperial eagle made of wood. During the second “building program” in 1935/36 and the following expansion from 1936 to 1938, the wooden cladding was replaced and, in many cases, the existing building structure was built over. The piling up of the building masses as an effective backdrop for the eight-day propaganda act could therefore only be carried out on the basis of predominantly functional spatial contents, which often did not fit together. The end buildings of the main stand always remained unused, the wing buildings and the towers of the ramparts only accommodated numerous toilets and a few transformer stations. The pressure of deadlines to present a monumental piece of architecture at the Nazi party rally in September led to excessive planning and construction. Due to subsequent design changes, parts that had already been built were dismantled. At least in the main rooms and the exterior, the Zeppelin grandstand was completed for the last Nazi party rally in 1938. Much of the structural damage that has triggered the current debate about preservation and security projects is already due to the planning and implementation of the building. As early as 1941, numerous stones had to be replaced because they were installed damp due to lack of time. [5]  In 1967, the pillar galleries were blown up by the city of Nuremberg and a little later the towers were also demolished halfway up. [17]  Today the stand is in need of renovation. 80 percent of the natural stone blocks on the steps and 60 percent of the stones on the facades are destroyed or damaged. The city of Nuremberg is planning restoration and maintenance. [18] KdF city Edit  In the northern area of ​​the Nazi party rally grounds, on what is now the site of 1. FC Nürnberg , the KdF city was built in 1937 . Some of the wooden exhibition buildings built for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were brought to Nuremberg after the competition was over and rebuilt there. During the Nazi party rallies, regional products were presented and leisure events were held in the exhibition halls. The KdF city burned down after a bomb attack in 1942. [19] Workers' housing complex Edit Former workers' housing complex, now the August Meier Home  In 1939, a residential complex was built to the east, directly adjacent to the Nazi party rally grounds, for the workers of the German Labor Front who were deployed at the Nazi party rally grounds. Seven connected outbuildings were built onto the main building to serve as accommodation. The facility, located in the forest, was rebuilt after the war despite severe bomb damage and was briefly used as accommodation for American soldiers. Since 1947, the majority of it has been used as a retirement home ( August Meier Home) and the rear area as a municipal emergency housing facility for the homeless and state-run shared accommodation for asylum seekers . The construction of a new retirement home on the site, which was decided in 2017 [20] and completed in 2023 [21] , which replaced the home operation in the historic buildings, and the closure of the homeless settlement planned for 2009 [22] led to extensive changes . The extent to which the existence of listed buildings is threatened by this is not yet known. Storage areas Edit RAD tent camp , 1939  The individual camp areas, the HJ camp, the SA , SS and NSKK camps, began directly at Märzfeld train station in a southeasterly direction . This area is now used as a residential area. The Wehrmacht and RAD camp areas were located on Moorenbrunnfeld and are largely undeveloped. Trafostation Edit The former transformer station with fast food restaurant, 2006  The transformer station on Regensburger Straße was built in 1934 to supply power to the Nazi party rally grounds. After 1945 the building became the property of the city of Nuremberg. The local electricity supplier N-ERGIE used the technology to supply electricity until 1998, after which the transformer station lost its purpose due to technical changes. Since June 2006, part of the building has housed a fast food restaurant and a fitness studio. Train stations Edit The Märzfeld train station, 2005  For the arrival and departure of the participants, the Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof train stations and the Dürreteich and marshalling yard stations near the site were used to an approximately equal extent. The Märzfeld train station was only used from 1938 but was never completed.  The Fischbach train station was renovated and significantly expanded in 1940 as part of the construction of the Nazi party rally grounds. [23]  The Zehnteich train stations and the Märzfeld train station, located between Märzfeld and Langwasser camp, were also planned as part of the broad-gauge railway project . A broad-gauge line was planned from Hamburg via the newly built Nürnberg-Buch station and further south towards Munich. SS barracks Edit Former SS barracks  The original plan did not include SS accommodation; it was not until 1936 that the SS made corresponding requests. Franz Ruff was appointed architect and a building site on Frankenstrasse was selected. The building complex was completed in 1939 and was described as the “gateway to the Nazi party rally grounds”, even though it was on the edge of the site. Radio operators were trained there during the war. [24] Granite production in concentration camps Edit Blasting in the quarry of the Mauthausen concentration camp, 1941  Granite was sometimes used as a building material in buildings such as the Große Straße and the Congress Hall . Since this was expensive, the SS set up a granite industry with concentration camp prisoners from the Flossenbürg , Mauthausen , Groß-Rosen and Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camps . These camps were set up near granite quarries. [25] A memorial in front of the St. Lorenz Church commemorates the murderous work in the quarries . However, there is evidence that no granite from concentration camps was used in the completed and existing buildings; there were only initial deliveries in stock for planned buildings, especially reddish granite from the Natzweiler quarry for the German Stadium, which Albert Speer specifically ordered for this in September 1941 Purpose requested. [26] [27] During the war, on April 22, 1945, a swastika was blown away by the Allies on the main stand of the Zeppelin Field. [28] The site after 1945 Edit  After the Second World War, the remaining building materials and rubble were covered with earth; This created the small hills that characterize the Volkspark Dürrenteich , the local recreation area around the Dürrenteich.  The Märzfeld was largely unused after 1945. U.S. forces seized much of the area to create makeshift ammunition caches in some of the towers. In the 1960s, the site was cleared for residential development in the new Langwasser district . During this time you could camp there and use the toilets available in the towers. The first towers were blown up in 1966.  After 1945, the United States Air Force initially used Grand Street as a military airfield . Over time, the huge area turned out to be an extremely conveniently located parking lot in the immediate vicinity of the exhibition center , the stadium and the folk festival square . In 1992/93 a renovation costing twelve million German marks was carried out.  The congress hall now largely serves as a warehouse and the inner courtyard as a storage area, including for the stalls of the Nuremberg Christmas market and for granite slabs for the improvement of the Große Straße. When there are high numbers of visitors, such as at a folk festival, it also serves as a parking area. Shortly after the war there were plans to demolish it and convert it into a football stadium around 1960, both of which were not realized because the costs were too high. In 1987 the city council prevented the construction of a shopping center. In the 1980s, the police depot for confiscated vehicles was also housed there, including the fleet of the Hoffmann military sports group . The Documentation Center for the Nazi Party Rally Grounds has been located in the northern of the two head buildings since 2001 , presenting the history of Nuremberg and its significance for National Socialism from the time of the Weimar Republic to the post-war period. The Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra has its headquarters in the southern building, the Serenadenhof . From June 2008 to 2010, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra's concert hall served as an alternative venue for the Nuremberg State Theater during the general renovation of the main building.  The Nuremberg Folk Festival takes place on the square between the Congress Hall and Große Straße .  Large events are still held on parts of the site today, such as the Rock im Park festival around the stadium where 1. FC Nürnberg plays its home games. One of the most impressive concerts on the site was Bob Dylan's performance on July 1, 1978, when he sang Masters of War, among other songs, in front of around 80,000 visitors opposite the Zeppelin Field grandstand . (Organizer Fritz Rau to Bob Dylan: “80,000 mostly Germans turned to you and turned their backs on Hitler.”). On August 16, 1981, the one-day Golden Summernight Concert took place with bands such as Foreigner , Kansas , Blue Öyster Cult , Motörhead , Blackfoot , 38 Special , More and Iron Maiden . [29] After a few years (September 4, 1983), the annual festival continued as the Monsters of Rock Festival with headliners such as Whitesnake , Blue Öyster Cult, Meat Loaf , Thin Lizzy , Saxon , Motörhead and Twisted Sister . AC/DC were also guests at Zeppelinfeld on May 8, 2015. In 1988, the closing service of the Christival took place on the Nazi party rally grounds with 30,000 visitors. [30]  Until the opening of the official documentation center, the city tolerated a private exhibition in the Steintribüne at Zeppelinfeld , which it later supported. Since the hall under the stone stand was not heated, the exhibition had to close in winter. The installations Overkill I + II by Hans-Jürgen Breuste were installed in front of the entrance in 1987/88. [31]  Since 1947, the street circuit known as the Norisring has been located around the stone stand , where an annual DTM car race is held.  On April 22, 1945, after a US Army victory parade, the swastika on the main stand was blown up from the Zeppelin Field facility, which was essentially undamaged during the Second World War. From 1945 onwards, the US Army created a sports and leisure area for its soldiers and their families on the Zeppelin Field itself, the so-called Soldier Field . When the US Army withdrew in 1995, it was handed over to the city of Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Rams American football team now plays its home games there, with some fans jokingly and ironically using the name “Soldier Field” in reference to the stadium of the same name in Chicago.  At the end of 2007, the Nuremberg town hall reported that the Zeppelin stand was in danger of collapsing. [32] [33] [34] The top plateau and the Golden Hall were closed. [35] Due to the partial demolition of the building in June 1967 (colonnades) and in 1979 (outer towers) and the disposal of rubble in the eight staircases accessible from the rear, the structural stability of the building was no longer guaranteed. In addition, the situation is made worse by leaks, as water penetrates through the blown-off covering and blast damage. As an immediate measure, the stairwells were opened in 2008 and cleared of construction rubble. The back was shielded with grilles. At the same time, civil engineering work was also carried out in the rear area of ​​the stands. [36] In 2011, the cultural officer for the city of Nuremberg, Julia Lehner , called for the grandstand to be renovated as soon as possible with financial support from the federal government and the Free State of Bavaria . [37] In 2016, the Nuremberg city council gave its approval to structurally securing the Zeppelin field and grandstand. Previously closed areas, such as B. the Golden Hall should become part of the tour. [38] The federal government and the Free State of Bavaria have agreed to contribute to the costs amounting to 85.1 million euros. The start of construction has not yet been determined. [39]  Due to the now very high density of events, a dynamic traffic control system was installed for the entire site in 2002 for around 26.3 million euros. After two years of construction, it went into regular operation in March 2004 as the most extensive traffic control system in Europe after a successful test phase. [40] [41]  In October 2005, the competition announced in September 2004 for a new information system on the former Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg was decided. The jury selected the proposal from the Nuremberg studio LIPOPP from the competition entries. The site information system is intended to enable interested visitors to independently visit the former Nazi party rally site. The system consists of 23 information steles spread across the entire site . The official inauguration took place on May 25, 2006 ( Ascension Day ). [42]  In 2020, the Zeppelin grandstand was painted in the colors of the Pride movement ( rainbow flag ) by the “Rainbow Prelude” group . The Nuremberg photographer Peter Kunz documented the work of the same name created as a result of the action, which was removed by the city of Nuremberg. [43]  As part of the application for the title of European Capital of Culture 2025 (N2025), the premiere of Selcuk Cara's adaptation with spoken text of Richard Wagner's " Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg " took place on June 28, 2020 in the Congress Hall building complex on the former Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In addition to the concept, spoken text and direction, the singer Cara also took over the areas of artistic production management, stage space, lighting design and costumes. [44]      Serenadenhof 2013      Serenade Court 2013      Neubaugebiet in Nürnberg-Langwasser 2007      New development area in Nuremberg-Langwasser 2007      Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände 2007      Die Kongresshalle mit dem Dokuzentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände (rechts) und dem Veranstaltungsort Serenadenhof (links), 2021      The congress hall with the Nazi Party Rally Grounds documentation center (right) and the Serenadenhof event location (left), 2021      Innenhof der Kongresshalle 2008      Inner courtyard of the congress hall 2008      Volksfestplatz mit Kongresshalle 2004      Volksfestplatz with congress hall 2004      Informationstafel am Stadion Nürnberg      Information board at the Nuremberg stadium      Kongresshalle mit temporärem Festplatz      Congress hall with temporary festival area  See also Edit      History of the city of Nuremberg     Air raids on Nuremberg  literature Edit      History for all e. V. (Ed.): Site inspection - The Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg , Sandberg Verlag, 4th supplemented and updated edition, Nuremberg 2005, ISBN 3-930699-37-0 .     Christina Haberlik: 50 classics. 20th Century Architecture . Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 2001, ISBN 3-8067-2514-4 .     Ingmar Reither: “Words made of stone” and the language of poets. The Nazi party rally grounds as a poetic landscape. (Nuremberg City History(s) 4, published by Geschichte Für Alle e. V.), Sandberg Verlag, Nuremberg 2000, ISBN 3-930699-15-X .     Siegfried Zelnhefer: The Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. Nürnberger Presse publishing house, Nuremberg 2002, ISBN 3-931683-13-3 .     CD-ROM: The Nazi Party Rally Grounds. Imbiss-media publishing house, Nuremberg 2004, ISBN 3-938451-00-9 .     Eckart Dietzfelbinger, Gerhard Liedtke: Nuremberg - place of the masses. The Nazi Party Rally Grounds – Prehistory and Difficult Legacy. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-86153-322-1 .     Eckart Dietzfelbinger: Nuremberg. Nazi Party Rally Grounds and Palace of Justice. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-772-4 .     Yvonne Karow: German victim. Cultish self-extinction at the Nazi party rallies. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-05-003140-9 .     Hanne Leßau (ed.): The Nazi party rally grounds during the war. Captivity, mass murder and forced labor , Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2021, ISBN 978-3-7319-1015-2  Web links Edit      Homepage of the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds     Overview plan     Online exhibition on the history of the Nazi party rally grounds     Tours of the Nazi party rally grounds     Information page about buildings in Nuremberg 1933–1945     Thoughts on the use of the site (PDF; 2.74 MB)     Documentary “Controlled | Derelict – everyday life between Hitler’s ruins” (2017)     Information page from the city of Nuremberg on the subject  Individual evidence Edit      ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )     ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from July 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )     ↑ Terrain information system for the former Nazi party rally grounds. Retrieved July 11, 2023 .     ↑ Nuremberg Laufamholz Suburban Association - Historical Postcards , accessed on February 20, 2013.     ↑ Jump up to:a b Christian Kayser, Peter Kifinger: On the construction history of the Nuremberg Zeppelin Field. Threatening backdrop. German construction newspaper . December 16, 2015, accessed November 21, 2017.     ↑ Adelheid von Saldern: Staged Pride: City Representations in Three German Societies (1935–1975) , Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, p. 137.     ↑ Jump up to:a b EXTRACT from Michael Gerhard Kaufmann "ORGAN AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM". Musikforschung Verlags-Gesellschaft mbH, Kleinblittersdorf 1997 ( Memento from December 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). walcker.com. Retrieved December 3, 2017.     ↑ 75 years of the Walcker organ opus 2432. Martin Luther Memorial Church Berlin-Mariendorf ( Memento from December 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). jubal.bplaced.net. Retrieved December 3, 2017.     ↑ Esmond HL Rodex: The Organ in the Congress Hall, Nuremberg . In: The Organ . October 1951 ( web.archive.org [PDF; 2.2 MB ; accessed on September 22, 2021]).     ↑ Luitpoldhalle on nuernberginfos.de. Retrieved December 6, 2017.     ↑ Nazi party rally grounds. Luitpoldhain-Luitpoldhalle. In: Buildings in Nuremberg 1933–1945. Arne Marenda, accessed January 9, 2011 .     ↑ Alexander Schmidt: The Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. 5th, completely revised edition. Nuremberg 2017, pp. 35–61, here p. 36.     ↑ Photovoltaic system on the roof of the Nuremberg Congress Hall     ↑ Northern Bavaria editorial team: Too many unanswered questions! Historians call for a postponement of the interim opera in the Congress Hall . Nürnberger Nachrichten from November 24, 2021. (accessed November 28, 2021).     ↑ Michael Grube: Rheinmetall-Borsig AG Unterlüß factory airfield. Retrieved on May 26, 2023 (German).     ↑ Introduction: Silbersee and Silberbuck in the southeast of Nuremberg - a dangerous hazardous waste dump in the groundwater area. Retrieved May 26, 2023 .     ↑ 7. Zeppelin Grandstand. In: Nuremberg Museums. Retrieved January 20, 2024 .     ↑ Preservation of the Zeppelin Grandstand/Zeppelin Field (repair concept). In: Nuremberg Building Authority. Retrieved January 20, 2024 .     ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive )     ↑ Article from April 14, 2017 on www.nordbayern.de     ↑ Article from May 11, 2023 on www.nn.de     ↑ http://www.nn-online.de/artikel.asp?art=1041229&kat=10 ( Page no longer available , discovered in May 2019. Search in web archives )     ↑ Nuremberg-Fischbach train station (1940). In: BAUZEUGEN Architecture 1933–45: Focus on Nuremberg and Franconia. Arne Marenda, April 12, 2015, accessed October 1, 2019 .     ↑ Federal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees (ed.): One building - many names , Nuremberg 2000, ISBN 3-9805881-6-5     ↑ Schieber, M. Nuremberg - an illustrated history of the city. Munich: Beck, 2000.     ↑ Alexander Schmidt: The Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg . Sandberg Verlag, Nuremberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-930699-91-9 , pp. 36, 73.     ↑ Museums of the City of Nuremberg, Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds (ed.): Fascination and Violence. Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally Grounds Documentation Center . Nuremberg 2006, p. 58 f.     ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Nuremberg: We really don't need this Nazi architecture . In the world . January 7, 2015 ( welt.de [accessed April 11, 2020]).     ↑ Golden Summernight - With Foreigner, 38 Special and 5 other artists in Zeppelinfeld , last.fm     ↑ Interview with Ulrich Parzany and Roland Werner     ↑ Museums of the City of Nuremberg: The Nazi Party Rally Grounds /     ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from April 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive )     ↑ http://www.nn-online.de/artikel.asp?art=716649&kat=10 ( Page no longer available , discovered in May 2019. Search in web archives )     ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from October 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive )     ↑ Marco Puschner: Pompous building with profane content. In: nordbayern.de. Nürnberger Zeitung, September 3, 2009, accessed on October 16, 2020.     ↑ http://www.nn-online.de/artikel.asp?art=1056524&kat=120 ( Page no longer available , discovered in May 2019. Search in web archives )     ↑ Klaus Tscharnke: The Zeppelin grandstand is crumbling. In: nordbayern.de. September 25, 2011, accessed on October 16, 2020.     ↑ Conceptual preliminary considerations. In: nuernberg.de. City of Nuremberg, accessed on October 16, 2020.     ↑ André Fischer: For 85 million euros. Zeppelin field becomes a major project. In: nordbayern.de. Nürnberger Zeitung, January 15, 2019, accessed on October 16, 2020.     ↑ Northern Bavaria Motorway Directorate, City of Nuremberg/Economic Department (ed.): Dynamic traffic control system for trade fair/stadium/ARENA . Nuremberg 2004 ( nuernberg.de [PDF; 665 kB ]).     ↑ Award for traffic control system. Fraunhofer Society, April 2, 2003, archived from the original (no longer available online) on January 4, 2015 ; accessed January 9, 2011 .     ↑ Terrain information system for the former Nazi party rally grounds. Retrieved July 11, 2023 .     ↑ Guerrilla art in Nuremberg. Don't paint me a rainbow. In: zeit.de. Retrieved December 21, 2020 .     ↑ Egbert Tholl: History demands - Nuremberg wants to become European Capital of Culture in 2025. Selcuk Cara makes a contribution to this with his version of the “Meistersinger” . Criticism of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 1, 2020.