March 18, 2008
Berlin, again...
Looking at the KaDeWe department store from GEMA’s terrasse. Went at lunch. Massive store, the largest in Europe they say, 100 years old last year. Wondered about, mostly on the 5th floor, Arts & Entertainment. Special DVD display on von Karajan performing with the Berliner Philarmoniker (http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/home/) ; bought that of Beethoven’s 9 symphonies. Time to go back to work. Must come back to see the 6th floor, the Gourmet floor, which I am told has a food selection from all over the world, rival to London’s Harrod’s (see their website: http://www.kadewe-berlin.de/og6_engl.php)
Taking a couple of hours off “the agenda”
The sun is back. The daffodils and crocuses are out in the Tiergarten. On my way to an exhibition, “Mythos Germania”. Germany squaring off with its past. Enough time has passed that it can look at Hitler and the Nazi period without too much guilt. This is about Hitler’s folly of making Berlin the world’s capital – Germania! His detailed plan to build a city at the hearth of the “thousand years”’ empire. The Great Hall, that could hold 180,000 people, dominating a plaza that holds another million! At the head of the Great Road, larger than the Champs Elysés, bordered by ministries and public buildings, the design work of Albert Speer, a mere 32 years old. Vanished in the vagaries of war…Would have been spectacular, but at what humanitarian cost! Built on the back of Jews’ and others’ life. No “grandeur” is worth that price! The Fuhrer’s Chancellery, already built – which survived the bombardments and was only razed down in 1948 – was a sign of things to come. Lots of older Germans visiting that day; but also a few younger, much younger ones. Funny, and not a coincidence, that the exhibition hall is contiguous to the famous memorial to persecuted Jews. History is never far away, and it is a good thing, so that we can remember.
Walking back on my steps to the hotel along the Tiergarten, to the “Agenda”…
Press reports on Mythos Germania…
Adolf Hitler's plans to pack the centre of Berlin with huge squares and gigantic buildings are going on display at a new exhibition in the German capital. "Mythos Germania" is the name of the exhibition opening onSaturday (March 15) that features the detailed plans for bombastic architecture by Albert Speer. At the heart of the plans for over-dimensional structures was The Great Hall, a massive domed structure that would have been built on the spot where the Reichstag parliament building is located today. The Great Hall was going to be 290 meters high and the capacity of180,000 would have made it more than twice as large as the country's largest soccer stadium today. "It is like a theme running through his plans and those of architect, Speer. They wanted to chisel into stone their motto that 'the individual is small, alone he is meaningless, the state is everything', and that is what they wanted to show with these gigantic buildings," said Sascha Keil, one of the organizers, as he pointed to a replica of the massive structure that vaguely resembles St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The exhibition shows plans, architectural models and pictures of the planned city, which was designed to be a symbol of the German Reich's power. "I learned quite a lot of new things," said one visitor, Sascha Keil. "I didn't really know what 'Germania' meant before, and this hall, which you can see behind me, it's fascinating how big it is, how pompous. And you always think of bad things when you think of the Nazis-era, and it was all very terrible, but when you look at what they wanted to build, it is somehow impressive - and then you can understand somewhat how people go carried along by the ministries and everything." Included is also a model of Hitler's "Triumphbogen" (Arc deTriomphe), which would have had a volume 49 times larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It would have been at the southern end of the 'North-South Axis', one of two massive boulevards that would have dissected the city centre with bombastic architecture on all sides. The exhibition also has the plans for the "Fuehrer Palast" to be located near the where the Reichstag stands. The parliament building was to be demolished. The "Fuehrer Palast" would have included a 400-square meter office for Hitler, which had to be reached by a long marble corridor, another method Hitler wanted to use to intimidate visitors. Although Hitler's "Berlin - Welthauptstadt" ("Berlin -Capital of the World"), as he called it, never materialized because theThird Reich collapsed, some of the building work carried out by Nazis can still be seen. "The darker side can be seen in the system of enforced-laborers that was necessary for the building work," Keil said. "The forced evacuation of around 80,000 apartments was pushed through with much brutality, those of both Jewish and non-Jewish families. And there would have been a great slice cut out of the city, 40 kilometers long and several hundred meters wide through the historical centre of Berlin, it would have turned the entire face of the city onto its head." Graves were also removed in order to clear the way for tunnels through the city and Berlin's Jewish quarter and other areas were evacuated from 1933 so that homes could be used for Germans whose houses had been demolished for the building. "It was impressive, and now I finally realize why my parents had to move in 1940 from Schoeneburg to Friedenau, where I then grew up. I know that the apartment had belonged to a Jewish family, we still have furniture from them, but we could never trace them," said Helge Leitner. The exhibition is a part of the Berliner Underworlds, which was founded in 1997 and documents subterranean architecture. It is located between the "Fuehrer Bunker" where Hitler killed himself in 1945 and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial built in 2005. The new exhibition runs through the end of 2008.
Hitler's Vision for Berlin Explored in `Germania'
Review by Catherine Hickley
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- A colossal, copper-domed hall, crowned with an eagle clutching a globe, would have loomed over Berlin if Adolf Hitler had realized his vision of Germania, the would-be capital of the Third Reich.
Designed to hold 180,000 Berliners, with room for another million people outside, the vast hall was projected to soar 320 meters into the sky, almost as high as East Berlin's television tower, dwarfing the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.
The hall dominates an architectural model of the grand plan, on show at an exhibition called ``Mythos Germania: Shadows and Traces of the Imperial Capital'' that opens in Berlin tomorrow.
The model was created for Oliver Hirschbiegel's film ``The Downfall'' (2004), starring Bruno Ganz, which reenacts Hitler's last days in the bunker. Maps, photographs and explanations in English and German complete this compact show, housed in a plainly built new exhibition hall near the Holocaust memorial.
Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, who died in 1981 at age 76, planned to change the course of the River Spree to get rid of some awkward bends, dig up seven cemeteries, and flatten hundreds of homes -- not to mention the Swiss embassy -- to make way for his monumental granite buildings. He aimed to complete the new city by 1950.
``Berlin will only be comparable as a world capital with ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome,'' Hitler said. ``What is London, what is Paris compared to that?''
It is unnerving to learn that Bloomberg's Berlin office stands on a spot that Speer had in mind for his gargantuan Armaments Ministry. The Reichstag was to be integrated into a row of buildings next to the great hall; it would have looked matchbox-sized by comparison.
Gigantic Arch
A massive triumphal arch, almost 50 times the size of Paris's Arc de Triomphe, was to tower over a boulevard decorated with the weapons of vanquished enemies. Hitler, who had begun planning the arch in 1925 -- years before taking power -- wanted the names of all 1.8 million German soldiers who perished in World War I to be inscribed on it. He commissioned war reliefs by his favorite sculptor, Arno Breker, to decorate the base.
``Like the ancient pharaohs, he (Hitler) planned to use stone to ensure his own immortality,'' Speer, the only leading Nazi to plead guilty and express remorse at the Nuremberg trials, said in an interview with Playboy in 1971. ``Germania would not be a city, but a sarcophagus.''
Very little of Germania ever made it into stone, and still less has survived. Hitler's outsized Reichskanzlei, with its marble gallery twice the length of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, was destroyed by the Soviet occupiers in 1948.
Olympic Stadium
Isolated remnants of Nazi architecture include Hermann Goering's Luftfahrtministerium, now the German Finance Ministry; Tempelhof airport, whose runways are set to close and whose future is hotly debated; the Olympic Stadium; and one of the city's more obscure architectural oddities: the Schwerbelastungskoerper, or heavy-load tester.
Speer built this mammoth concrete cylinder in the south of the city to test how much weight Berlin's swampy land could bear before work started on the triumphal arch. Until recently, the Schwerbelastungskoerper was hidden behind dense foliage and scaffolding, surrounded by fences and signs forbidding entry.
About the size of a four-story block and 15 tons in weight, it is made of solid steel-reinforced concrete. It was placed under heritage protection in 1995. The local authority is renovating it at a cost of 722,000 euros ($1.13 million), aiming to complete it by the end of the year and open it to the public after that.
Inside, measuring equipment shows that Speer's engineers found the Schwerbelastungskoerper to have sunk 19 centimeters -- not quite deep enough to have made the arch unfeasible.
Battle for Berlin
It was the outbreak of World War II that prevented construction of the arch, and of the rest of Germania. The spot planned for the great domed hall became the scene of one of the final episodes of the war, the Battle for Berlin.
Looking out of the exhibition hall's windows, it's eerie to think what the view would have been, had events taken a different turn.
``Mythos Germania'' runs until the end of the year. It is organized by Berliner Unterwelten, or Berlin Underworlds' Association, a group that uncovers subterranean structures in the city and organizes tours of bunkers, tunnels and vaults.
To contact the writer on this story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: March 14, 2008 13:47 EDT
Berlin, again...
Looking at the KaDeWe department store from GEMA’s terrasse. Went at lunch. Massive store, the largest in Europe they say, 100 years old last year. Wondered about, mostly on the 5th floor, Arts & Entertainment. Special DVD display on von Karajan performing with the Berliner Philarmoniker (http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/home/) ; bought that of Beethoven’s 9 symphonies. Time to go back to work. Must come back to see the 6th floor, the Gourmet floor, which I am told has a food selection from all over the world, rival to London’s Harrod’s (see their website: http://www.kadewe-berlin.de/og6_engl.php)
Taking a couple of hours off “the agenda”
The sun is back. The daffodils and crocuses are out in the Tiergarten. On my way to an exhibition, “Mythos Germania”. Germany squaring off with its past. Enough time has passed that it can look at Hitler and the Nazi period without too much guilt. This is about Hitler’s folly of making Berlin the world’s capital – Germania! His detailed plan to build a city at the hearth of the “thousand years”’ empire. The Great Hall, that could hold 180,000 people, dominating a plaza that holds another million! At the head of the Great Road, larger than the Champs Elysés, bordered by ministries and public buildings, the design work of Albert Speer, a mere 32 years old. Vanished in the vagaries of war…Would have been spectacular, but at what humanitarian cost! Built on the back of Jews’ and others’ life. No “grandeur” is worth that price! The Fuhrer’s Chancellery, already built – which survived the bombardments and was only razed down in 1948 – was a sign of things to come. Lots of older Germans visiting that day; but also a few younger, much younger ones. Funny, and not a coincidence, that the exhibition hall is contiguous to the famous memorial to persecuted Jews. History is never far away, and it is a good thing, so that we can remember.
Walking back on my steps to the hotel along the Tiergarten, to the “Agenda”…
Press reports on Mythos Germania…
Adolf Hitler's plans to pack the centre of Berlin with huge squares and gigantic buildings are going on display at a new exhibition in the German capital. "Mythos Germania" is the name of the exhibition opening onSaturday (March 15) that features the detailed plans for bombastic architecture by Albert Speer. At the heart of the plans for over-dimensional structures was The Great Hall, a massive domed structure that would have been built on the spot where the Reichstag parliament building is located today. The Great Hall was going to be 290 meters high and the capacity of180,000 would have made it more than twice as large as the country's largest soccer stadium today. "It is like a theme running through his plans and those of architect, Speer. They wanted to chisel into stone their motto that 'the individual is small, alone he is meaningless, the state is everything', and that is what they wanted to show with these gigantic buildings," said Sascha Keil, one of the organizers, as he pointed to a replica of the massive structure that vaguely resembles St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The exhibition shows plans, architectural models and pictures of the planned city, which was designed to be a symbol of the German Reich's power. "I learned quite a lot of new things," said one visitor, Sascha Keil. "I didn't really know what 'Germania' meant before, and this hall, which you can see behind me, it's fascinating how big it is, how pompous. And you always think of bad things when you think of the Nazis-era, and it was all very terrible, but when you look at what they wanted to build, it is somehow impressive - and then you can understand somewhat how people go carried along by the ministries and everything." Included is also a model of Hitler's "Triumphbogen" (Arc deTriomphe), which would have had a volume 49 times larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It would have been at the southern end of the 'North-South Axis', one of two massive boulevards that would have dissected the city centre with bombastic architecture on all sides. The exhibition also has the plans for the "Fuehrer Palast" to be located near the where the Reichstag stands. The parliament building was to be demolished. The "Fuehrer Palast" would have included a 400-square meter office for Hitler, which had to be reached by a long marble corridor, another method Hitler wanted to use to intimidate visitors. Although Hitler's "Berlin - Welthauptstadt" ("Berlin -Capital of the World"), as he called it, never materialized because theThird Reich collapsed, some of the building work carried out by Nazis can still be seen. "The darker side can be seen in the system of enforced-laborers that was necessary for the building work," Keil said. "The forced evacuation of around 80,000 apartments was pushed through with much brutality, those of both Jewish and non-Jewish families. And there would have been a great slice cut out of the city, 40 kilometers long and several hundred meters wide through the historical centre of Berlin, it would have turned the entire face of the city onto its head." Graves were also removed in order to clear the way for tunnels through the city and Berlin's Jewish quarter and other areas were evacuated from 1933 so that homes could be used for Germans whose houses had been demolished for the building. "It was impressive, and now I finally realize why my parents had to move in 1940 from Schoeneburg to Friedenau, where I then grew up. I know that the apartment had belonged to a Jewish family, we still have furniture from them, but we could never trace them," said Helge Leitner. The exhibition is a part of the Berliner Underworlds, which was founded in 1997 and documents subterranean architecture. It is located between the "Fuehrer Bunker" where Hitler killed himself in 1945 and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial built in 2005. The new exhibition runs through the end of 2008.
Hitler's Vision for Berlin Explored in `Germania'
Review by Catherine Hickley
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- A colossal, copper-domed hall, crowned with an eagle clutching a globe, would have loomed over Berlin if Adolf Hitler had realized his vision of Germania, the would-be capital of the Third Reich.
Designed to hold 180,000 Berliners, with room for another million people outside, the vast hall was projected to soar 320 meters into the sky, almost as high as East Berlin's television tower, dwarfing the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.
The hall dominates an architectural model of the grand plan, on show at an exhibition called ``Mythos Germania: Shadows and Traces of the Imperial Capital'' that opens in Berlin tomorrow.
The model was created for Oliver Hirschbiegel's film ``The Downfall'' (2004), starring Bruno Ganz, which reenacts Hitler's last days in the bunker. Maps, photographs and explanations in English and German complete this compact show, housed in a plainly built new exhibition hall near the Holocaust memorial.
Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, who died in 1981 at age 76, planned to change the course of the River Spree to get rid of some awkward bends, dig up seven cemeteries, and flatten hundreds of homes -- not to mention the Swiss embassy -- to make way for his monumental granite buildings. He aimed to complete the new city by 1950.
``Berlin will only be comparable as a world capital with ancient Egypt, Babylon or Rome,'' Hitler said. ``What is London, what is Paris compared to that?''
It is unnerving to learn that Bloomberg's Berlin office stands on a spot that Speer had in mind for his gargantuan Armaments Ministry. The Reichstag was to be integrated into a row of buildings next to the great hall; it would have looked matchbox-sized by comparison.
Gigantic Arch
A massive triumphal arch, almost 50 times the size of Paris's Arc de Triomphe, was to tower over a boulevard decorated with the weapons of vanquished enemies. Hitler, who had begun planning the arch in 1925 -- years before taking power -- wanted the names of all 1.8 million German soldiers who perished in World War I to be inscribed on it. He commissioned war reliefs by his favorite sculptor, Arno Breker, to decorate the base.
``Like the ancient pharaohs, he (Hitler) planned to use stone to ensure his own immortality,'' Speer, the only leading Nazi to plead guilty and express remorse at the Nuremberg trials, said in an interview with Playboy in 1971. ``Germania would not be a city, but a sarcophagus.''
Very little of Germania ever made it into stone, and still less has survived. Hitler's outsized Reichskanzlei, with its marble gallery twice the length of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, was destroyed by the Soviet occupiers in 1948.
Olympic Stadium
Isolated remnants of Nazi architecture include Hermann Goering's Luftfahrtministerium, now the German Finance Ministry; Tempelhof airport, whose runways are set to close and whose future is hotly debated; the Olympic Stadium; and one of the city's more obscure architectural oddities: the Schwerbelastungskoerper, or heavy-load tester.
Speer built this mammoth concrete cylinder in the south of the city to test how much weight Berlin's swampy land could bear before work started on the triumphal arch. Until recently, the Schwerbelastungskoerper was hidden behind dense foliage and scaffolding, surrounded by fences and signs forbidding entry.
About the size of a four-story block and 15 tons in weight, it is made of solid steel-reinforced concrete. It was placed under heritage protection in 1995. The local authority is renovating it at a cost of 722,000 euros ($1.13 million), aiming to complete it by the end of the year and open it to the public after that.
Inside, measuring equipment shows that Speer's engineers found the Schwerbelastungskoerper to have sunk 19 centimeters -- not quite deep enough to have made the arch unfeasible.
Battle for Berlin
It was the outbreak of World War II that prevented construction of the arch, and of the rest of Germania. The spot planned for the great domed hall became the scene of one of the final episodes of the war, the Battle for Berlin.
Looking out of the exhibition hall's windows, it's eerie to think what the view would have been, had events taken a different turn.
``Mythos Germania'' runs until the end of the year. It is organized by Berliner Unterwelten, or Berlin Underworlds' Association, a group that uncovers subterranean structures in the city and organizes tours of bunkers, tunnels and vaults.
To contact the writer on this story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: March 14, 2008 13:47 EDT
