Ghosts of Berlin

Chapter 4 - Nazi Berlin
"The Third Reich's architectural legacy in Berlin goes far beyond Hitler's personal plans"

Nazi architecture has three primary roles in the creation of its new order:  Theatrical; Symbolic; Didactic. In addition, the Nazis saw architecture as a method of producing buildings that had a function, but also served a larger purpose. A stage in which the grandeur of Nazi propaganda to be unveiled.  

Theatrical:  The stage was set in common mundane buildings to some of the most elegant, grandest building found in Germany.  The stage was used to generate a legitimate historical link to the German history.  Their construction tell a great deal about and are symbols of those who created them, when they were created and why they were created. Designs of this kind occasionally occur by accident; however, the architectural styles speak to the tastes of those who constructed the building or paid for its construction. It also speaks to the tastes of the general architectural movements of the time and the regional variants that influenced them. Nazi buildings were an expression of the essence of the movement, built as a National Socialist building should be, regardless of the style used.

Symbolic: Symbolism, graphic art and hortatory inscriptions were prominent in all forms of Nazi-approved architecture. The eagle with the wreathed swastikas, heroic friezes and free-standing sculpture were common. Often mottoes or quotations from Mein Kampf or Hitler's speeches were placed over doorways or carved into walls. The Nazi message was conveyed in friezes, which extolled labour, motherhood, the agrarian life and other values. Muscular nudes, symbolic of military and political strength, guarded the entrance to the Berlin Chancellery

Didactic: The Nazis chose new versions of past styles for most of their architecture. This should not be viewed simply as an attempt to reconstruct the past, but rather an effort to use aspects of the past to create a new present. Most buildings are copies in some form or other, but for the Nazis, copying the past not only linked them to the past in general but also specifically to an Aryan past. Neoclassical architecture and Renaissance architecture were direct representations of Aryan culture. Volkish architecture was also Aryan but of a Germanic nature. The role the Nazis hoped architecture would play in the creation of a new order was like that of a book: to provide a place to hold the message, the symbols to impart it and a teacher to read it. Architecture, like every other art form, would be produced to serve the new Nazi order. For them, if this meant following existing architectural styles or providing analogues of other buildings, then so it is.

Hitler once stated, "Architecture is not only the spoken word in stone, but also is the expression of the faith and conviction of a community, or else it signifies the power, greatness and fame of a great man or ruler." On September 1937, at Nuremberg, he affirmed that the new buildings of the Reich were to reinforce the authority of the Nazi party and the state and at the same time provide "gigantic evidence of the community."  The architectural evidence of this authoritative legacy can still be seen very dominate in Nuremberg, Munich and Berlin.

Chapter 5 - Divided Berlin
"Tens of thousands of buildings had been destroyed, more were badly damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people has lost their homes." (176)
The 20th century has been crueler to Berlin than to most any other major city in the world.  Berlin is a city with a haunted past that can been seen in a multitude of facets founds across the city.  A half-century after World War I, the Berlin found itself demolishing the past and rebuilding the future to portray the new image of a global power with the Utopian housing tracts of the 1920s; then the Nazis' megalomaniacal neoclassicism in the '30s; the devastating Allied bombing raids in the '40s; the redoubled, misguided urban renewal of the '50s and '60s; and, of course, the Communists' lobotomizing Wall.

The burden of the past is heavy and confused. Powerful stylistic traditions compete and clash amongst one another, such as the, baroque vs. volkisch, modernist vs. neoclassical, Karl Friedrich Schinkel vs. Walter Gropius, and each is politicized, freighted with connotation. Berlin is an ambivalent city, a city of uneasy architectural taboos. Albert Speer's  Nazi splendors must be condemned no matter how handsome they sometimes seem during this era of classical revival. The Wall, horrid as ever, has nevertheless become the great built symbol of the city, a folk-brutalist icon. The city that tore itself apart under the Nazis and again under the progressives is now unbudgingly preservationist.

The once divided city still today shows its rebuilt history through it's urbanization, economy, architecture, and infrastructure.  One plan to revive the city sought a decentralized and functional division of the city.  That is, they envisioned the creation of  many individual "cells,"  with a few thousand residents each.  While some of his plan was followed through with the platz system found with in the city.  Many other ambitious plans and ideas for Germany were lost in translation leaving a certain disproportionate focus function found in the West vs. East.  The west is a very transparent city populated with commerce and public aspects of to be viewed as a dominate power and more superior.  Whereas the East, much of the splendor was found with in the Governmental sector.  It was a showcase to the west that their government was more superior.