Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds
History
Nuremberg cannot escape its history. Nuremberg does not even try, officially proclaiming Nazi constructions as historical monuments in 1973.
In 1933, Nuremberg was designated as the city of the annual NSDAP rally. To the south of the city center, a propaganda backdrop for the National Socialists gradually emerged over an area of eleven square kilometers. Von Ludwig and Franz Ruff, under the supervision of Albert Speer, began constructing the congress hall for 50,000 people. This unfinished building, with its imposing dimensions, was to be just a little sibling compared to the larger structure planned to the south. Nevertheless, it evokes feelings of a cathedral and humiliation of the individual. The forty-meter-high, three-story semi-circle of more than a hundred meters in diameter, made of granite, never received its roof. After 1939, funds were needed for an even more senseless purpose - war.
In the 1960s, ideas emerged to transform and complete the congress hall. However, there wasn't enough funding for a football stadium, and a civic initiative strongly opposed the construction of a shopping center. Demolition would have been far more expensive, and the reuse of materials was morally unthinkable. Which bank would want to boast of having facade cladding from a Nazi sanctuary? The interior spaces largely serve as storage to this day.
It took more than half a century for the building to find its function, and the exhibition "Fascination and Violence", still struggling in the Zeppelinsfeld grandstand, corresponds to the space.
Center
In 1998, Domenig won the invited competition with his radical solution. In the northern part of the unfinished congress building, he literally carved out new museum spaces. His design turned the monumental right angles of the existing structure on its head, relying on the principle of mutual overlapping and strengthening, critical interaction, and perception of the rooms, staging the alienation of Nazi architecture as an exhibit in itself. The building is diagonally cleaved by a glass corridor that connects the end of the exhibition with the entrance foyer. It passes through the columned hall, the military platform, and ends as a console into the congress hall, which the Nazis never managed to roof. The perception of the monumentality of the rooms is different from here; their impact has been disrupted - the size and empty pathos remain. High-strength concrete and massive masonry were not easy to disturb; traces of the cuts remain visible. Domenig's glass and steel structure distances itself from the language of the old material. The new shows visitors the old as an exhibit. The old walls, materials, gestures, and "intellectual perfection" are newly experienced with distance and safety. The play with construction and welded blackened sheets create a suggestive accompaniment to the exhibition documenting the rise and fall of one of the two most criminal organizations of the last century.
Future
The Documentation Center is just one step towards reshaping the image of the city's history. More than a year ago, an urban planning competition addressing the fate of the entire area of the former NSDAP concluded. Considering revitalizing the Ausmarchachse, which is sixty meters wide and measures over two kilometers, is not one of the easiest tasks.
Nuremberg cannot escape its history. Nuremberg does not even try, officially proclaiming Nazi constructions as historical monuments in 1973.
In 1933, Nuremberg was designated as the city of the annual NSDAP rally. To the south of the city center, a propaganda backdrop for the National Socialists gradually emerged over an area of eleven square kilometers. Von Ludwig and Franz Ruff, under the supervision of Albert Speer, began constructing the congress hall for 50,000 people. This unfinished building, with its imposing dimensions, was to be just a little sibling compared to the larger structure planned to the south. Nevertheless, it evokes feelings of a cathedral and humiliation of the individual. The forty-meter-high, three-story semi-circle of more than a hundred meters in diameter, made of granite, never received its roof. After 1939, funds were needed for an even more senseless purpose - war.
In the 1960s, ideas emerged to transform and complete the congress hall. However, there wasn't enough funding for a football stadium, and a civic initiative strongly opposed the construction of a shopping center. Demolition would have been far more expensive, and the reuse of materials was morally unthinkable. Which bank would want to boast of having facade cladding from a Nazi sanctuary? The interior spaces largely serve as storage to this day.
It took more than half a century for the building to find its function, and the exhibition "Fascination and Violence", still struggling in the Zeppelinsfeld grandstand, corresponds to the space.
Center
In 1998, Domenig won the invited competition with his radical solution. In the northern part of the unfinished congress building, he literally carved out new museum spaces. His design turned the monumental right angles of the existing structure on its head, relying on the principle of mutual overlapping and strengthening, critical interaction, and perception of the rooms, staging the alienation of Nazi architecture as an exhibit in itself. The building is diagonally cleaved by a glass corridor that connects the end of the exhibition with the entrance foyer. It passes through the columned hall, the military platform, and ends as a console into the congress hall, which the Nazis never managed to roof. The perception of the monumentality of the rooms is different from here; their impact has been disrupted - the size and empty pathos remain. High-strength concrete and massive masonry were not easy to disturb; traces of the cuts remain visible. Domenig's glass and steel structure distances itself from the language of the old material. The new shows visitors the old as an exhibit. The old walls, materials, gestures, and "intellectual perfection" are newly experienced with distance and safety. The play with construction and welded blackened sheets create a suggestive accompaniment to the exhibition documenting the rise and fall of one of the two most criminal organizations of the last century.
Future
The Documentation Center is just one step towards reshaping the image of the city's history. More than a year ago, an urban planning competition addressing the fate of the entire area of the former NSDAP concluded. Considering revitalizing the Ausmarchachse, which is sixty meters wide and measures over two kilometers, is not one of the easiest tasks.
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