REICHS ARK
SPEER: DER REICHS ARCHITEKT
Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler and Arno Breker in Paris 1940
REICHSARK: VOLUME 001
SPEER: Der Reichs Architekt
REICHSARCHITEKTURE INTERNATIONAL
REICHSMARK EDITORIAL Ltd.
Trabener Str. 78, Berlin, Deutschland
P.C. 14193
Telephone: +49 30 0000 0000
Editor: Isaac Monroy
Prices:
Printed in Deutschland
1,000 volumes
THE REICHSARCHITECT
NÜRNBERG TRIALS AND LATER LIFE
THE GENIUS BEHIND THE NAZI
SPEER PROJECTS
SPEER PROJECTS
KONGRESSHALLE
ZEPPELINFELD
DEUTSCHE STADION
GROßE STRAßE
MÄRZFELD
NEUE REICHSKANZLEI
TRIUMPHBOGEN
VOLKSHALLE
DEUTSCHE PAVILLON
THE REICH ARCHITECT
ALBERT SPEER
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, born on 19 March 1905 in Mannheim, Baden, German Empire. Was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nürnberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison for many reasons included her intimate involving in The Final Solution.
Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct very important structures.
Speer was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labour and forced labour. He was acquitted on the other two counts. On 1 October 1946, he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.
Speer's release from prison was a worldwide media event. He said little, reserving most comments for a major interview published in Der Spiegel in November 1966. Although he stated he hoped to resume an architectural career, his sole project, a collaboration for a brewery, was unsuccessful. Instead, he revised his Spandau writings into two autobiographical books, and later published a work about Himmler and the SS. His books included Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries.
Speer made himself widely available to historians and other enquirers. In October 1973, he made his first trip to Britain, flying to London to be interviewed on the BBC Midweek programme. In the same year, he appeared on the television programme
The World at War. Speer returned to London in 1981 to participate in the BBC Newsnight programme. He suffered a stroke and died in London on 1 September.
Albert Speer Portrait and Sign
THE GENIUS BEHIND THE NAZI
In my own, Albert Speer was more than a Nazi head, he was one of the Best and most ambitious architects ever lived.
Speer's membership to the Nazi party lead to his first architectural projects. Speer was first asked to design the renovation for the home of Karl Hanke, a Nazi official in Berlin. Speer impressed other Nazi officials and key figures within the party, through Hanke he was given the more challenging task of rebuilding the party headquarters in Berlin.
Not long after Hitler came to power in 1933, Speer was invited by Joseph Goebbels to rebuild the propaganda Ministry in Berlin. Speer finished the work in just two months. In July 1933 he was asked to design the decoration for the Nazi Party Rally at Nürnberg. His design of a gigantic eagle that dominated the Zeppelin Field where the rally was held impressed Hitler himself. Speer was gaining a reputation not only as a creative architect but also as an efficient organiser.
Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer working
SPEER PROJECTS
Nürnberg:
▪ Kongresshalle
▪ Zeppelinfeld
▪ Deutsche Stadion
▪ Große Straße
▪ Märzfeld
Berlin:
▪ Neue Reichskanzlei
▪ Triumphbogen NB
▪ Volkshalle ― NB
▪ Führers Palace NB
Out of Germany:
▪ Deutsche Pavillon for The 1937 International Exposition in Paris
ALBERT SPEER JR.
Berlin 29 of July, 1934 Frankfurt 15 September 2017 Architect as his father and grandfather.
He is credited with being one of the few children of Nazi leaders to recognize the wrongs of their parent Speer said that, as child, his father was not the kind of father who went over your homework", referring to inattentiveness and mild neglect, but also said that Hitler was nice uncle, from my childish perspective
He said he did not hate his father and considered him good architect, much more modern than people think today .
Adolf Hitler with Albert Speer Jr on the Berghof terrace in the summer of 1940, from Eva Braun's albums
PROJECTS
After the death of Paul Ludwig Troost in January 1934, Albert Speer had become head of the overall planning of NSDAP representative buildings. Lord Mayor Liebel first contacted the Reich Ministry of Finance and was able to obtain a commitment of 2.2 million Reichsmarks, which could be spent on further planning. Liebel then informed Speer that Hitler was also in favour of the construction of the Congress Hall, and commissioned Ludwig Ruff with the preliminary planning on 29 March 1934.
With the beginning of the Second World War, construction work came to a standstill.
On June 25, 1940, the day the second armistice of Compiegne came into force, Hitler ordered the immediate resumption of the Nazi building program, explicitly mentioning the party congress buildings in Nuremberg. Speer was commissioned with the implementation, and in view of the shortage of labour, prisoners of war from the nearby Langwasser camp were to be used.
Model of The Kongresshalle
At the Congress Hall, however, their number was rather small and fluctuated between 200 and less than ten. The military situation led to the sporadic construction work on the Congress Hall coming to a standstill again in 1943, the prisoners of war were needed in warcritical production facilities.
Until 2020, there was broad agreement in Nuremberg on the importance of the Congress Hall as a place of learning and history. As the then Lord Mayor Ulrich Maly put it in 2014 in the foreword to a publication on the Congress Hall:
"The Zeppelin Tribune and Zeppelin Field, as well as the unfinished Congress Hall with its unprecedented stately architecture, are authentic places of learning of outstanding importance in the national and international landscape of remembrance. We are aware of the need of many people to deal with the past at such places. This also opens up other approaches in the mediation of history. The further the Nazi era approaches, the greater the importance of these visible and accessible buildings becomes."
Model
Between 1935 and 1937, the Zeppelin meadow was redesigned according to the design by Albert Speer into a parade area with grandstands, with the Zeppelin main grandstand built on the northeastern side of the field as the dominant backdrop. It is the only completed building on the Nazi party rally grounds.
The entire plant had the dimensions of 362×378 meters, the actual zeppelin field measured 290×312 meters. The inner surface 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 them as spectators in the stands.
They were divided by 34 towers on which flagpoles and anti-aircraft spotlights stood. With over 150 very powerful spotlights, which shone vertically into the sky around the Zeppelin field, the impressive “Lichtdom" was created.
On the north-eastern side of the field, the Zeppelin main grandstand with a length of 360 and a height of 20 meters was built on 1935 as a replacement for a provisional wooden grandstand. 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 height of 20 m.
The Zeppelinfeld
It contains an approximately 8 m high and more than 300 m² large hall, which is also called the Goldener Saal because of the decorative ceiling mosaics.
On the two corner towers of the Zeppelin Grandstand stood fire bowls, one of which is now in the Golden Hall in the grandstand and the other stands in front of the main entrance of the grandstand. In the middle of the grandstand, an additional elevated part was created, which was reserved for special guests of honour.
The central element was the speaker's pulpit, from which Adolf Hitler took parades and spoke to the masses.
As with the Luitpoldarena, the entire complex was oriented towards this point and thus towards the person of der Führer, which gave it an altar-like character.
The building, built between 1935 and 1937, consists of concrete, brick and shell limestone. Later renovations showed that the shell limestone slabs are of different thicknesses.
Due to the forward and backward processing with the bricks, a higher stability as well as a simultaneous material saving in the more expensive veneering was achieved.
The design, as Speer himself said, was not inspired by the Circus Maximus, but by the Panathinaikos Stadium, which had impressed him greatly when he visitedAthens in 1935.
Speer's stadium in Nuremberg was planned as a gigantic enlargement of the Greco-Roman model, from which he adopted the horseshoe design and the Propylaea, but converted into a raised structure built on pillars with a large columned courtyard, which was to receive an inner courtyard with pillars at the open end of the stadium.
The plans for the stadium in Nuremberg could not fall back on a location at the bottom of a gorge, as with the Panathinaikos Stadium in Athens, but had to be oriented towards a flat piece of land of 24 hectares.
Therefore, its five ranks for 400,000 spectators should have been supported in the usual Roman way by massive barrel vaults. Pink granite blocks were intended for the exterior façade, which would have risen to a height of about 90 meters: a series of 65-meter-high arches was to rest on a substructure of dark red granite.
The arcade and the pedestal in turn indicate a Roman roundel or stadium and not a Greek one, which according to tradition did not necessarily rest on a substructure. In order to quickly bring a wide range of spectators to their ranks, express elevators should be installed that transport 100 spectators simultaneously to the seats in the upper three ranks.
Model of The Deutsche Stadion
The short cross-centre line of the stadium culminated at each of its ends in the grandstand of honour for the Führer, the guests of honour and the press. Once again, the Roman construction method served as a model.
Speer apparently chose a horseshoe shape for his building after rejecting the oval shape of an amphitheatre.
According to Speer, the latter plan would have intensified the heat, as well as caused a psychological disadvantage – a comment that he did not explain further.
When Speer mentioned the enormous cost of the structure, Hitler, who laid the foundation stone on September 9, 1937, replied that the construction would cost less than two Bismarck-class battleships.
During the war, the work was stopped and the excavation pit, which was up to ten meters deep, was full of groundwater. The resulting lake is called Silbersee and is poisoned with hydrogen sulphide because of the Silberbuck in the immediate vicinity. The Silberbuck itself is a mountain of rubble and waste that grew between 1946 and 1962 and was up to 35 metres high.
Hitler, Speer und Bormann in The Deutsche Stadion
GROßE STRAßE
The construction of the Große Straße as a marching road and central axis of the site was completed in 1939. It is oriented in a northwesterly direction to the medieval imperial castle. This was intended to establish a historical connection to the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Diets in Nuremberg. However, it could never be used for party congresses, as no such events took place after the beginning of the war.
The actual road is two kilometers long (1.5 km have been completed) and 40 meters wide. South of the Dutzendteiche it is flanked by grandstand steps, which means that the width in this area is about 60 meters. Granite slabs in two different colours were laid on a concrete base. The street was structured with the colors light and dark gray, so that the groups marching there could more easily adhere to the alignment.
The Große Straße
The light grey, square plates have an edge length of 1.2 m, which corresponded to the length of two Prussian piercing steps. This should also make it easier to keep the formation during parades. Until the early 1960s, it served as a runway for the U.S. Army, which operated DHC-2 "Beaver" fixedwing aircraft and Sikorsky S-58 helicopters.
The March Field, the sandpit of the Wehrmacht. It was to be the high point of the party congresses. It was never quite finished. Today, remains of the towers can still be found on the site, which has now been developed into a residential area.
The March Field was to be one kilometre wide and 600 meters long. The exhibition fights were planned in this arena, which took place on the Zeppelin field until completion and always represented the highlight of the Nazi party rallies for the spectators.
The name Märzfeld comes from Mars, the god of war, and was also intended to commemorate March 1935, when general conscription was introduced. The battle arena was to have 24 defensive towers, spectator stands and a main stand. Hundreds of flagpoles should line the whole area.
Construction
only began in 1936. By the time the war began in 1939, only part of the facility had been completed. Only 11 of the 24 towers were built. An underground concrete tunnel for transporting the flags and flagpoles was also partially completed.
Model of The Märzfeld
When US forces seized the site in 1946, they used it as an ammunition depot, fuel storage facility, and aircraft hangar. They used the adjacent Grosse Strasse as their runway.
In 1966/67 the first towers were blown up by the Bundeswehr. Today there is a completely new district on the entire Langwasser site. The documentation shows where and how to find remains of the foundations of the towers.
When Speer mentioned the enormous cost of the structure, Hitler, who laid the foundation stone on September 9, 1937, replied that the construction would cost less than two Bismarck-class battleships.
During the war, the work was stopped and the excavation pit, which was up to ten meters deep, was full of groundwater. The resulting lake is called Silbersee and is poisoned with hydrogen sulphide because of the Silberbuck in the immediate vicinity. The Silberbuck itself is a mountain of rubble and waste that grew between 1946 and 1962 and was up to 35 metres high.
Hitler, Speer and Bormann
NEUE REICHSKANZLEI
On 11 January 1938, Hitler officially commissioned General Building Inspector Albert Speer with a new building along the entire Voßstraße, which corresponds to a building front of 421 metres in length. Planning had already begun in 1934, and from 1935 the 18 buildings of the street were bought up piece by piece. The Palais Borsig, which has also been owned by the Reich since 1934, was not demolished, but integrated into the new building. The construction plans were realized by Hans Peter Klinke.
From the beginning of 1938, work was carried out at full speed on the completion of the New Reich Chancellery in order to complete it in time for the annual diplomatic reception on 7 January 1939. This did not succeed; some expansion work lasted until the early 1940s. The description given by Speer in his autobiography after the Second World War that he had been asked to be the "Führer" at the end of January 1938 and that he had told him completely unexpectedly that Speer should design a New Reich Chancellery for him is otherwise undetectable.
Neue Reichskanzlei front
The construction of the Führerbunker, which was not provided for in the original plans, did not begin until 1943. It was also not located under the New Reich Chancellery, but together with other air raid shelters used by Hitler in the garden of the Old Reich Chancellery. In 1938, the New Reich Chancellery had also received air raid shelters; these were used by people from the surrounding area.
In total, the construction of the Reich Chancellery cost 90 million Reichsmarks, which corresponds to around 407.3 million euros in today's currency adjusted for purchasing power.
Speer's conception of the New Reich Chancellery was mainly concerned with
the power and glory of the Führer and the Reich.
With the famous "Diplomatic Route", he created a magnificent and elongated 300-metre-long spatial escape: from the monumental "Courtyard of Honour", via a porch into the "Mosaic Hall", the "Round Hall", the "Marble Gallery" ending in the "Reception Hall" or in the "Führer's Study".
This architectural concept drew on the baroque enfilade, the representative path to the absolute ruler through sumptuously furnished rooms. Speer and Hitler, however, wanted to surpass the baroque splendour. The "Marble Gallery" was twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles.
The New Reich Chancellery was to impressively underpin the claim to German dominance in Europe. Architect Caesar Pinnau was responsible for the interior design of several offices, the Fuehrer's Chancellery and the Great Meeting Room.
Hitler's study was the largest and most magnificent hall in the building. It had a floor area of almost 400 m² at a height of almost ten meters. Noble materials were used: dark red Saalburg marble, rosewood and rosewood for the walls, rosewood for the coffered ceiling and Ruhpoldinger stone slabs for the floor. The generously dimensioned desk was decorated with inlays and the top covered with red leather. The card table had a marble slab five meters long and 1.60 meters wide made of one piece.
On behalf of Hitler, Speer called on numerous artists and craftsmen to design the new Reich Chancellery. For example, the furniture of the power centre was made by hand especially for this construction. This also applied to silver cutlery and tableware, tapestries and curtains. Among the leading sculptors involved were
▪ Arno Breker (sculpture decoration on the central main portal Die Partei and Die Wehrmacht).
▪ Josef Thorak (larger-than-life horse bronzes on the terrace facing the park)
▪ Kurt Schmid-Ehmen (emblem: imperial eagle with swastika).
The building technology corresponded to the most modern standard at the time.
Speer decorated the garden behind the main building with large bronze figures, including two magnificent horses by Josef Thorak. One of the horse bronzes was last seen on a barracks site of the Russian armed forces in Eberswalde. Their whereabouts after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Germany in the 1990s were unclear until 2015, before the two "Walking Horses" were found on 20 May 2015 during a nationwide raid in Bad Dürkheim. A monumental granite relief by Arno Breker was also discovered in a warehouse, which was probably intended for the unrealized TriumphalArch.
During the air raids on Berlin, the New Reich Chancellery was only slightly damaged until the end of the war. After the conquest of Berlin, the Soviet troops captured one of the imperial eagles from the Reich Chancellery. The Soviet Union transferred it to Great Britain in 1946. Today it is exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London. As one of the central symbols of Hitler's power, the building complex of the New and Old Reich Chancelleries and the Palais Borsig, which was destroyed to varying degrees, was demolished from 1949 to 1956 on the orders of the Soviet Control Commission.
As the most important building of the plans, the hall was to be located at the northern end of the north-south axis in Berlin's Spreebogen. For this, the course of the river would have had to be changed slightly. As early as 1925, Hitler made a first draft sketch. After Speer was commissioned to redesign Berlin in 1937, there were still some changes.
Hitler calculated the construction costs at around one billion Reichsmarks, which he wanted to finance mainly from income from tourist entrance fees.
The completion of the hall, as well as that of almost all other buildings in Germania, was scheduled for 1950. The demolition of the Alsenviertel and the diversion of the Spree were already begun between 1939 and 1941.
Hitler's sketch for the Great Hall from 1925 was very much based on the Liberation Hall near Kelheim. It can be assumed that the further designs were also influenced by the Pantheon in Rome, which Hitler visited privately on 7 May 1938. For example, this building has an opaion.
Volkshalle
The design for the exterior design of the Great Hall followed entirely the National Socialist architecture and urban planning in the Nazi era, as a German embodiment of the neoclassical style that was widespread during this period.
The building was to be constructed of granite and marble and consist of a square 315 m × 315 m wide and 74 m high substructure and a dome rising above it. This should be 98 m above the ground and have a base diameter of 250 m. With 17 times the volume of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, it would have become by far the largest dome in the world. The main body supporting the dome had a corner tower with quadriga at the corners.
The column porch of the entrance area consisted of 17 double columns of 30 meters in height and a diameter of three meters each made of pink Swedish granite and bronze capitals and would have been lined with two sculptures. On the one hand an Atlas figure with the globe, on the other hand Tellus, who carries the celestial vault. These 15 meter high figures would have been made by Arno Breker. The column porch would have received an eagle figure on the left and right.
The planned Great Hall had only one huge interior with a floor area of about 38,000 m² In his opinion, the interior should have been designed very simply.
Hitler's Arc de Triomphe, or Triumphal Arch of Germany, was a colossal monument planned, but not built, by Adolf Hitler, and his architect, Albert Speer. The arch would be located in the southern part "North-South Axis" (Nord-Süd Achse), in the center of the Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin). Only the piles were built, as capital and materials were diverted for the war.
On the other hand, the construction tests, which included the elaboration of concrete blocks to monitor the solidity of the Berlin soil, showed that it did not have the necessary consistency to support a work with the weight
of the arch projected by Hitler (and that instead was muddy), since if it had been built it would have sunk in a short time.
The arch would be shaped like a tetrapile, measuring 117 meters high, and 170 meters wide. Inside, there would be the names of all those fallen in the First World War, and the arch would be adorned with reliefs made by Arno Breker.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 prompted the decision to halt construction until after the war to save strategic materials.
DEUTSCHE PAVILLON
For The World Exhibition of 1937 in Paris Hitler had desired to withdraw from participation, but his architect Albert Speer convinced him to participate after all, showing Hitler his plans for the German pavilion Speer later revealed in his autobiographies that he had clandestine look at the plans for the Soviet pavilion, and had designed the German pavilion to represent bulwark against Communism.
On the opening of the exhibition, only the German and the Soviet pavilions had been completed The fact that the two pavilions faced each other, turned the exhibition into competition between the two ideological rivals.
Speer's pavilion was culminated by tall tower crowned with the symbols of the Nazi state an eagle and the swastika The pavilion was conceived as monument to German pride and achievement was to broadcast to the world that new and powerful Germany had restored sense of national pride At night, the pavilion was illuminated by floodlights Josef Thorak's sculpture Comradeship stood outside the pavilion, depicting two enormous nude males, clasping hands and standing defiantly side by side, in pose of mutual defence and "racial camaraderie"
“The purpose of this magazine is nothing more than the dissemination on cultural ends of Nazi Architecture, this explicitlywithoutpropagandapurposes.
