Nazi architecture

Während des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde Luxemburg de facto an das Dritten Reich angegliedert. Die Germanisierungspolitik der NS-Besatzer betraf auch die Kultur und so entstanden ab Herbst 1941 urbanistische Entwürfe aus der Hand des Architekten Hubert Ritter und des Stadtplaners Karl-Heinz Löb für die Städte Luxemburg und Esch/Alzette.

Gemessen an der Planungswut der Machthaber hat die Architektur des Nationalsozialismus vergleichsweise wenige Bauten tatsächlich errichtet. Insbesondere bei den repräsentativen Staatsbauten ist daher auf ihre propagandistische Rolle zu verweisen. Diese nie gebauten Architekturen haben jüngst in der Populärkultur – Filme, Serien, Videospiele – eine starke Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Bemerkenswert ist, dass die Inszenierung dabei in einer gewissen Tradition steht, die gleichwohl zu hinterfragen ist: Neben der Frage, ob es moralisch legitim ist, die politische Kulissenarchitektur des Dritten Reiches derart zu überhöhen, sind methodische Überlegungen anzustellen. Ein Abwägen der Chancen und Risiken bietet sich daher an.

Former residences of the highest-ranking Nazi officials in Germany-occupied Poland have enjoyed a powerful and haunting presence since the Second World War. Their presence is very much tangible, including the actual buildings or sites where they once used to be, but they are also represented in propaganda photographs and publications from the era. In this paper, I discuss two major residences of this kind which still show traces of German interferences: the former Imperial Castle of Poznań, appropriated by the Wartheland Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, and the Wawel Royal Castle, which was taken up as residence by the Governor-General, Hans Frank. The two building complexes were exposed to a number of significant alterations which were intended to celebrate a new symbolic role to be played by the German centres of power in newly established German administrative units: the Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government. These residences were redesigned also with Hitler in mind, and each was to provide an apartment suite dedicated to his needs. In my discussion of the two residences and the alterations they were exposed to, I will try to examine the ways with which architecture was used in building the authority of power. Architecture and its visual representations were equally important in the process. In their efforts, two Nazi German officials modelled their ideas on those by Hitler but they also had to face the local context with its existing possibilities and limitations. In order to paint a broader picture of German activities and their symbolic longue durée, I have decided to provide an extended account that includes the alternating periods of occupation and independence: the Partitions of Poland, the Second Polish Republic, the Second World War, the post war period, and today. In my investigations, I draw upon Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos (2015) as well as Heritage Studies, especially those branches that explore ‘dissonant heritage’ and ‘the heritage of atrocity.’

This article deals with architectural competitions as an important element in how German architects pursued careers in occupied Poland. Reports on the competitions were the subject of numerous press articles-both in the daily press and specialist newspapers. Via these channels, information about the projects submitted reached a wide audience-the German settlers-and shaped their ideas about the hitherto alien Polish territories. My analysis is based on examples taken from various competitions in the Warthegau. I examine both the aesthetics of the submissions and how they were presented in the newspapers with textual commentaries. This reveals that press coverage gave the projects a significance similar to that of newly completed buildings and that, in a broad sense, the topic of architecture became an important tool of propaganda. This was also a way to convince the society of the successes achieved by the Germans in the occupied territories and to reinforce a sense of the stability of the new German authorities during the war.

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The link between politics and ideology on the one hand and art, or architecture in fact, on the other has often been thought of as a bad thing something that 'spoils' the art. This work, by using the example of Germany between the two World Wars, tries to represent art as an integrated part of all social, political, economic and historical movements in a society. In that light, Bauhaus and Nazi architecture are not seen as good or bad exceptions in the history of architecture, but as a natural course, the reasons and direct inducements of which can be traced in any part of a society. However, by that, the individual and irrational in art should not to be denied, but there should be put an accent on continuity of architectural thought and art before everything.Veza između politike i ideologije, sa jedne strane, i umetnosti, odnosno arhitekture, sa druge strane, često se smatrala za nešto ružno, nešto što 'prlja' ono umetničko u stvaralaštvu. Ovaj rad je, na primeru Ne...

Anders als die Geschichte der bildenden Kunst ist die Entwicklung des Designs, insbesondere der industriellen Formgestaltung, in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland eher durch Kontinuitäten als durch Brüche geprägt. Das verbindende Element war das Credo zur "Sachlichkeit", das sich bereits mit der Gründung des Deutschen Werkbundes als gestalterisches Prinzip etablierte.

Seit den Anfängen der Forschung zur Kunst im Nationalsozialismus in den frühen 70er Jahren steht die Darstellung der Geschlechter in besonderer Weise im Fokus, weil sich in ihr die verhängnisvollsten Grundpositionen nationalsozialistischer Politik und Ideologie Ausdruck verschafften: die rassische Selektion und Reproduktion (in den Darstellungen der Frau) und eng damit verbunden der Kriegsund Expansionswille (in den Darstellungen des Mannes).

Das Promotionsthema nimmt die seit einigen Jahren aufkommende internationale Entwicklung der Architektur zu einer integrativen Einbeziehung von Vegetationsfassaden auf. Mit ihren vielseitigen Leistungsfaktoren greifen innovative Bautechniken der Fassadenbegrunung uber die Gestaltgebung hinaus in eine okologische und energetische Wertschopfung des Hochbaus ein, indem sie u. a. zu einer Einsparung von Energie (Heizung/Luftung/Kuhlung), zur Luftverbesserung des Umfelds und zu einem Lebensraumangebot an Flora und Fauna beitragen. Das Thema gliedert sich damit in die Masnahmenforderung unserer Zeit nach einem umweltvertraglichen Handeln ein, wie der Substitution fossiler Energietrager durch die Erforschung und Nutzung naturlicher Alternativen und Techniken. Nach Feststellung des allgemeinen Forschungsstands und Klarung der Betrachtungsgrenzen – aufbauend auf den Ergebnissen einer umfanglichen Literaturauswertung – werden Struktur und Inhalt sowie Methode und Aufbau der Arbeit dargelegt. ...

Atrium e l’itinerario culturale, riconosciuto dal Consiglio d’Europa, sul tema dell’Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Europe’s Urban Memory (Architettura dei regimi totalitari nella memoria urbana europea). Vale la pena soffermarsi sul concetto di patrimonio dissonante, elemento che sta al centro dell’operato di Atrium. Innanzitutto la natura “dissonante” del patrimonio, nel caso di Atrium, deriva dall’oggetto culturale proposto – il lascito architettonico ed urbanistico dei tanti diversi regimi totalitari o autocratici che hanno caratterizzato molta parte dell’Europa durante il Novecento. Un oggetto, quindi, che ha una valenza duplice, fisica (si interessa di edifici, strade, quartieri, decorazioni) e concettuale, ossia il legame fra gli oggetti e il particolare contesto politico e storico che li ha prodotti. Si parte, insomma, dall’esistenza di un oggetto materiale nel presente – un dato edificio o area urbana – ma si amplia lo sguardo necessariamente al significato di quest...

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In the context of the history of planning, designing and constructing new St. Peter's the concepts of renewal and continuity can be insightful. Renewal was the essence of the plans of Pope Julius II (1503-1513) of around 1505, since the wording in documents points to renewal instead of replacing the old church completely: words like reparare et exornare, rehedificare and instaurare were used. When in the early 17th century pope Paul V decided to tear down the remainder of the old basilica, the chapter feared that many of the monuments, altars and tombs in the old basilica would disappear, which would diminish the visibility of the continuity of the basilica and its chapter. One of those objects was the so-called Madonna della Colonna, a fresco of the Virgin and Child painted on the third column on the left in the old basilica. This miracle-working image became increasingly popular in the last quarter of the 16th century was officially recognized when in 1578 an altar was install...

Torås Kommandoplasse: Observations from a dark summit Much of my artistic and written practice relates to the numerous ways in which conflict produces and redefines space. This undertaking ordinarily requires a mixed methodology of visual techniques and fieldwork to reveal the hidden or obscured dimensions of militarism. As a process it is always challenging, demanding different strategies for each unique site, and more often than not is only partially successful at interpreting the nuanced and sometimes immaterial relationships between landscape, architecture, technology and militarism. Over the past six years, I have been returning to the island of Tjøme on the Oslofjord in Norway to document a recently demilitarized zone -a process which prompted me to revisit the medium of monochrome photography to describe the zone and its curious architecture. By removing colour from these landscapes and military forms, I was hoping to diffuse the distinction between the organic and inorganic, between rocks and trees, mosses, lichens and concrete, and suggest a shared, primordial materiality. This site, which was once a Nazi artillery base and later a Cold War training facility, is a photographer's delight: a dramatic cluster of cryptic military buildings and infrastructure in a

The architectural heritage of the former Eastern Bloc (behind the Iron Curtin), including Poland, was until recently treated as a "dissonant" heritage of Communism. Increasing time distance allows an objective look at the indisputable values of this architecture and to reject of the political connotations. Conservatory protection of this architectural heritage is very difficult and complex, particularly referring to individual residential houses of those times. Currently, such sites, remaining in the hands of private owners, undergo uncontrollable transformations leading to their irreversible deformations. The objective of the presented project was to develop the methodology of their conservation on a precisely selected example of a building located in Katowice, Upper Silesia. The obtained results may be used as the basis for creation of a model procedure related to the studied individual residential houses and for preparing a package of conservation guidelines and recommendations for their upgrades and adaptation to modern standards.

Zur digitalen und wissenschaftlichen Erschließung eines fotografischen Bestandes der NS-Zeit Zusammenfassung: Im Zentrum des Beitrags stehen Abläufe und Praktiken sowie Fragen nach dem theoretischen Rahmen eines Forschungsprojekts zur Digitalisierung und Erschließung eines umfangreichen Konvoluts von ca. 1 750 Glasplattennegativen, die um 1940 im Auftrag des Generalbauinspektors Albert Speer von der Staatlichen Bildstelle erstellt wurden und Modell-sowie Planunterlagen zu Bauvorhaben des ‚Dritten Reiches' zeigen. In einer Datenbank sollen Digitalisate zugänglich gemacht, Aspekte der Bestandsgeschichte geklärt sowie Teilbestände beschrieben und kontextualisiert werden. Wie ist jedoch parallel dazu eine wissenschaftliche Durchdringung des Bestandes möglich? Welche Rolle spielen hierbei die Digital Humanities? Im Sinne der ‚Messbarkeit des NS-Regimes' wird der Begriff der archäologischen ‚Fundund Befund-Dichte' vorgeschlagen. Quantität und Qualität der Fotografien wie auch ihrer Kontexte stellen wichtige Kriterien bei der Wahl der Forschungsschwerpunkte dar. Mithilfe von Metaphern der Feldarchäologie-‚Survey', ‚Sondage' und ‚Grabung'wird das Projekt in Struktur, Umfang und Ausrichtung umrissen und der an Beispielen erläuterte Arbeitsprozess hinterfragbar und justierbar gemacht.

This paper considers the possibilities of the digital processing of historical maps in various different digital lexicons. It focuses, in particular, on a project by the University of Luxembourg called "Luxatlas". This is a genuinely digital, online atlas that considers the urban development of Luxembourg City since 1820. The article discusses the chances, risks and possibilities of integratingexisting planning materials from the years 1941–1944 into the digital atlas in a contextualizing manner. The plans mentioned derive from the German occupation of Luxembourg, when the country was not only occupied by German troops, but also annexed and incorporated into the neighboring Gau Moselland. As a consequence, the establishment of a general development plan should tie thecountry to the Reich both infrastructurally and socio-culturally. The Leipzig city planner Hubert Ritter, an architect originally devoted to the "Neues Bauen", was responsible for drawing up the plans. Itis for these reasons, amongst others, that his urban planning principles for Luxembourg had a remarkable longevity and were taken up again in the late 1950s by the local planning authorities,which had been active under Hubert Ritter during the occupation.

Dissonant historical heritage and the role of cultural institutions: the case of ATRIUM in Forlì The search for a brand for a city or a region usually identifies a peculiar selling point, or rather, a particularity of the area which involves some element of uniqueness, a feature which cannot easily be copied by a competitor, some trait which is non-replicable and thus constitutes a cultural monopoly. Which city in the world can boast a heritage relating to St Francis comparable to that of Assisi? What other city in France can be so easily associated with ceramics as Limoges? The names of these cities themselves reveal their intrinsic market appeal. Other cities and areas are not so fortunate and have to search for local inhabitants or products which have in some way made their mark on the wider world but have an exclusive relation to the place. The case of the small town of Forlimpopoli, near Forlì in northeastern Italy, is a good example. Home of Pellegrino Artusi, the author of what is considered to be the first Italian recipe book, La scienza in cucina ("The Science of Cooking"), Forlimpopoli has used this intrinsic cultural capital in order to make a small name for itself. The town boasts a documentation centre on Artusi and on cookery, "Casa Artusi", with a restaurant attached. Every year an "Artusi Prize" is given to luminaries in the area of food-including Vandana Shiva, Serge Latouche, il premio nobel Muhammad Yunus, and Oscar Farinetti, inventor of the Eataly brand. And for ten days in summer the town gives itself over to a gastronomic event in his name, the "Festa Artusiana." The challenge facing areas which are inexorably linked to negative characteristics, events or inhabitants is more complicated but in some cases unavoidable. How can Transylvania not market its links to Bram Stoker's fictional character Dracula, despite the negative connotations concerned? How can Predappio, a small town in the hills near Forlì avoid its fame as the birthplace of Italy's well-known twentieth-century dictator, Benito Mussolini? The situation of Predappio is further complicated by the fact that the town attracts a small but significant number of neo-fascists two or three times a year to visit 1 The author was city councilor with responsibility for culture in the city of Forlì from 2009 to 2014.

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Die Architektur des Nationalsozialismus bietet – gemessen an der Planungswut der Machthaber – einen bemerkenswert geringen Output an tatsächlich errichteten Bauten. Nicht zu Unrecht ist daher auf die propagandistische Rolle der NS-Architektur in Papier- und Modellform hingewiesen worden: Renommierte Fotografen wurden beauftragt, Modellfotos und Aufnahmen gebauter Denkmälern anzufertigen, um sie in Fachzeitschriften und ideologisch motivierten Prachtbänden zu publizieren. Diese Film- und Fotoaufnahmen sind noch heute Teil einer jeden TV-Dokumentation im Spartenfernsehn. In wissenschaftlichen Aufbereitung, aber auch in der allgemeinen Populärkultur nehmen zudem inzwischen virtuelle 3D-Rekonstruktionen eine immer größer werdende Stellung ein, ohne dass die Implikationen vollständig durchdacht wurden.
Der Vortrag zielt daher auf zwei sich ergänzende Fragestellungen ab: Einerseits soll die Rolle der in verschiedenen analogen Medien publizierten Modelle vergleichend hinterfragt werden und welchen Stellenwert – bzw. in der historischen Perspektive propagandistische Absichten – man ihnen zugestehen muss; hier bietet sich beispielsweise der Vergleich mit Léon Kriers hochumstrittener Speer-Monografie von 1985 an. Andererseits soll der Bogen zur Methode der virtuellen Rekonstruktion, auch in ihrem Einsatz in der populärwissenschaftlichen Aufbereitung, geschlagen werden. Neben der durchaus diskutablen Frage, ob es moralisch legitim ist, die politische Kulissenarchitektur des Dritten Reiches derart zu überhöhen, stellt sich die methodische Frage nach der Veranschaulichung von Zeitschnitten. Da besonders die städtebaulichen Großplanungen einem stetigen und schnellen Wandel unterworfen waren, ist die Frage, welche un-gebauten Zustände visualisiert werden sollen, naheliegend. Darin liegt jedoch zugleich eine große Chance dieser Aufbereitung: Neben der allgemeinen Erschließbarkeit eröffnen frei wählbare, polyperspektivische Blickwinkel zusätzliche Betrachtungsebenen und tragen so zu einem maßgeblich erweiterten Erkenntnisgewinn bei.

This paper examines the similarities in government sponsored buildings commissioned by America and Nazi Germany between WWI to the end of WWII.  Both governments built in a Nationalistic style that focused on centralizing its culture, using immense neoclassical buildings, and an overall ambition to imitate the ruins of ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome.

Mit dem Einmarsch der deutschen Truppen 1940 endete die Unabhängigkeit Luxemburgs für vier Jahre. Die Stadt Luxemburg, bis dato Hauptstadt eines souveränen Staates, wurde von den Nazis zu einer Kreisstadt degradiert und sollte im Gegenzug durch einen Generalbebauungsplan aufgewertet werden. Ziele waren ein „deutsches“ Erscheinungsbild der Stadt und die Auslöschung der luxemburgischen Identität. Diese geplante Umgestaltung kam auch in der architektonischen Kontextualisierung nationalsozialistischer Bildsymbole zum Ausdruck.

Durch die Untersuchungen Christoph Timms zu Gustav Oelsner und zum Hamburg-Altonaer Wohnungsbau von Hermann Hipp ist bekannt, dass vier von der Gemeinnützigen Siedlungs-AG Altona (SAGA) errichtete mehrgeschossige Flachdach-Wohnhäuser um 1934 mit geneigten Dächern aufgestockt wurden. Dass es sich hier um eine konzertierte "Steildach-Aktion" der neuen nationalsozialistischen Altonaer Stadtverwaltung handelte, zu der weitere Umbauten innerhalb der Stadt gehörten, wird in diesem Kapitel erstmals näher erläutert.

During 2009 I embarked on a 1200 km Journey in Germany following the relics of Nazi Germany today. The main purpose of this research was to learn more about Contemporary memory culture. I choose to focus mainly on architecture and everyday life objects that were designed during the period between the two world wars. The book include seven interviews (out of 30 I have conducted) as well as personal travelogue and some of the photos I have taken. The opening chapter of the book is devoted to understanding the German Cultural Policy.

This book is ambitious, fascinating, interdisciplinary, and frustrating. It is deeply erudite and highly idiosyncratic. The author seeks to initiate a new academic approach to Christian aesthetics. Instead, she succeeds in deploying an arsenal of new or seemingly sophisticated expressions for describing experiences and sensations familiar to anyone who has actively participated in an Eastern Orthodox liturgy.  It takes courage to write about Hagia Sophia, Byzantium's greatest church and most exceptional monument.  The book's goal is to explore the dynamics through which sacred space emerges in Hagia Sophia. This is the kind of book that will make more than an ephemeral ripple.  Many will cite it, few will savor it, and graduate students will fear it.

The fact that during the whole period of the Third Reich no monuments dedicated to Hitler were erected, has not been thoroughly reflected yet. Here it is explained with an explicit ban by the "Fuehrer" on the one hand and German memorial culture on the other.

Jacques Verstraeten, historien et expert en analyse du paysage Photos : AC Villers-le-Bouillet sauf avis contraire Malgré nos recherches, il se peut que des ayants droits n'aient pas été contactés. Dans ce cas, nous vous demandons de le faire savoir auprès de l'éditeur responsable.

“Phantom heritage”, that is the long-term impact of landscapes altered by manipulation and lies, is discussed using the example of Thingstätten, huge open-air theatres built in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1937. They hosted quasi-religious rituals and highly stylized theatre productions, called Thingspiele, using cutting edge mass theatre technology. At Goebbels behest and following a concept designe invented by the Nazi´s star architect  Albert Speer, around 40 of these venues, which were based on a “Völkisch” concept  developed by right wing ideologs at the end of the 19th century, were built and “consecrated” between 1934 and 1937. They hosted religiously charged mass events involving literally casts of thousands, including marching and singing actors, armatures and involved spectators. The architecture of these arenas, their “sacred” positions in a mystical “Germanic” landscapes, their coupling with war memorials and the spectacles shown in them were designed to heroize the “martyrs” of past wars and rally the population for the Nazi´s ideology and martial goals. Ambitious designs embedded them into vast “sacred” landscapes celebrating the Nazis’ concept of blood and soil. Although these vast venues only flourished for 3 years before Goebbels abandoned the somewhat anarchic Thingspiel concept for more easily managed propaganda events, most of them still exist and many are still in use, particularly to host pageants and rock concerts. In a few  cases, there has been a clear continuity in their function as venues for political  agitation and  memorials to war heroes up to this day.
This paper focusses on typical and spectacular examples which include the seminal „Reich´s Thanksgiving Site” on the Bückeberg in Lower Saxony, the spectacular Thingstätte on the  Heiligenberg which towers over Heidelberg, the Wakldbühne embedded in the Olympic “Reichssportfeld” in Berlin and the Upper Silesian Thingstätte on the Góra Świętej Anny. 
As Thingstätten, which are now increasingly threatened by development and decay, are coming into the focus of heritage management, they are also being rediscovered and used as rallying points by radical right-wing movements. Once deserted and forgotten these  phantoms are threatening to awake.

Dass der Nationalsozialismus – eine rassistische politische Ideologie, anti-christlich und natürlich erst recht anti-jüdisch – religiösen Charakter gehabt haben soll, ist für viele eine befremdliche Vorstellung. Tatsächlich aber haben schon Zeitgenossen, Anhänger wie Gegner des Nationalsozialismus, Deutsche wie Ausländer, vielfältige religiöse Erscheinungsformen im Nationalsozialismus festgestellt. Im Vokabular der Nationalsozialisten, vor allem auch in der Sprache Hitlers selbst, spielten religiöse Begriffe wie ‚Glaube’, ‚Bekenntnis’, ‚Erlösung’, ‚heilig’ eine wichtige Rolle. Politische Großveranstaltungen des Dritten Reichs, wie z.B. die Reichsparteitage, hatten kultischen Charakter. Das Politische wurde im Nationalsozialismus ins Religiöse überhöht, das Ziel einer geeinten Volksgemeinschaft als ‚Glaubensgemeinschaft’ propagiert. Der Nationalsozialismus bot mit seiner religiösen Verbrämung auch ein existentielles Sinnangebot, das seine Anziehungskraft erhöhte. Zugleich verstärkte das religiös akzentuierte Bekenntnis zum Nationalsozialismus die Verpflichtung, den ideologischen und politischen Zielen des Regimes zu dienen.

Festival arenas and parade streets, which provided architecturally choreographed settings for massive political rallies, advanced to becoming the two most essential components of every city’s urban redesign, serving solely to celebrate highlights of a newly, autocratically imposed political calendar. These celebrations were to provide a commonality of experience, promote unified national identity and quickly and permanently establish tradition and ritual.
These political Nazi celebrations were meticulously organized, aesthetically calculated and hence, psychologically manipulative – whether they were designed in the form of mass rallies or smaller public events. Like the title suggests, their structures and meaning were determined by two criteria, the organisation of space and the employment of iconographically significant material.
The opening chapter, “A New Order of Time and Space”, deals with the phenomenon of festival culture, whose socio-political and psychological significance had already been articulated by the National Socialist Party as early as in the 1920s and were soon strictly regulated by specific propaganda departments of the government. After the Nazi’s seizure of power in 1933, public life therefore underwent a huge transition. After all, in order to psychologically mobilize an entire nation, strategies had to be developed that weren’t located on the level of logical observation and rational reflection but that triggered subconscious feelings by creating “sensuous”, communal experiences.
Besides establishing a cyclical political calendar, specific cultic rituals were created and permanently installed. For these specific purposes alone, cultic sites, political symbols and other highly effective aesthetical elements were designed. These political “ambiences” served in removing the masses – both geographically and psychologically – from everyday life  in order to ensnare them in the totalitarian system of “leader” and “followers”.
The second chapter, “Urban Cult Sites”, focuses on sites within cityscapes, such as in Berlin and Munich. Mono-functional areas on the other hand, like the rally grounds on the outskirts of Nuremberg, pose an exception but follow the same principles structurally and architecturally, in order to represent autocratic intentions. Until the outbreak of war, festival sites and streets were aggrandized with immeasurable dimensions following those very characteristics, in a way that has, in general, only become of such significance in totalitarian regimes. Adjoining parade streets were of equal relevance, being part of the cult site’s infrastructure. Thus, cultic space was constituted not only by reconstructing and analyzing the permanent architecture, but by use of the specific utilized ephemeral materials.
It was therefore of further major relevance to determine how ephemeral materials, in opposition to solid and durable materials, constituted disparate semantic levels. Especially because in most of the secondary literature the materials of ephemeral stagings are merely treated as “cultic props”.
Political rallies however, were not confined to architectural settings in urban areas, but were also executed in the countryside, amplifying and utilizing hereby the “natural” ambiance. This is subject in the third chapter, “Political Cult Sites in Nature”, in which prominent aesthetical features illustrate which calculating propagandistic connotations were sought, by instrumentalizing these natural habitats and their regional materials. In addition, the Nazis also selectively enhanced and propagandized certain topographies, such as visible historical structures, silhouettes and skylines, which were either negated or an ennobling vicinity was sought to justify political ideologies.
The fourth and final main chapter on lighting effects begins with a chapter on fire, “Lumen Naturale – Fire Spectacles”. This chapter which covers different techniques of utilizing natural fire as a political medium and covers many different locations as its use was of almost pyromaniac nature and whose contrasting mythical and religious features were utilized for ideological purposes. Electric light, as the ephemeral design tool par excellence, took on a primary role in the designing and reorganization of space at political rallies, which constitutes a major part of the forth chapter, “Lumen supranaturalis – Lighting Effects”. Albert Speer’s “Lichtdom” was the cultic highlight of the entire, meticulously organized Reich’s party rallies in Nuremberg.
The final chapter is a summary of superordinate phenomena that epitomize specific characteristics of Nazi cult sites and its materials, the instrumentalization of specific environments, thus elevating them to political landscapes.

Aufgrund zahlloser TV-Dokumentationen ist die Architektur des Nationalsozialismus zwar im öffentlichen Diskurs präsent, doch wird sie meist auf Großprojekte in Berlin, München und Nürnberg reduziert. Der totalitäre Anspruch des NS-Staates erstreckte sich jedoch nicht nur auf alle Bereiche des öffentlichen Lebens, sondern auch auf alle Regionen.
So waren auch für Trier, Koblenz und Luxemburg (das 1940 vom Deutschen Reich annektiert worden war) umfassende Bauprogramme vorgesehen. Der Vortrag stellt diese Projekte in vergleichender Perspektive vor und diskutiert hierzu verschiedene Fragen: Welche ideologischen Prinzipien lagen den Plänen zugrunde? Gibt es einen nationalsozialistischen Baustil im „Gau Moselland“ und wie lässt er sich einordnen? Wie gehen wir heute mit dem architektonischen Erbe des Dritten Reiches um?

In 2008, the Conservation Régionale des Monuments Historiques d’Alsace (Regional Centre for Heritage Conservation in Alsace) launched a thematic survey on the architectural heritage of reconstruction in Alsace, undertaken by the Germans between 1940 and 1944. It started with the study and interpretation of the Cité Paysanne ("peasant settlement") district. This series of fourteen “ideal farms” is remarkable in several ways: its exemplarity and its publicity at the time, the extent of the documentation concerning it, as well as its urban and architectural preservation. This ensemble bears witness to the political will bring about a radical transformation of rural society and the agricultural economy by introducing modernity and renewing the social hierarchy. Furthermore, in considering the nature of this ensemble and the historical context of its construction, this survey led us to think anew about the notion of cultural heritage as well as the procedures which exist for its conservation as historical monuments.

Il Novecento ha lasciato tracce difficili nelle città d'Europa. I regimi che si sono succeduti hanno trasformato urbanisticamente e architettonicamente l'intero territorio e oggi è complesso relazionarsi con questi segni. Il progetto europeo Atrium - Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Managements si propone di valorizzare, con attenta cura e senza intenti mistificatori, proprio il “patrimonio scomodo” di 11 paesi dell'Europa del sud.

The XX Century left difficult traces inside the european cities. The different totalitarian regimes transformed the entire urban form and architectural style: now, the relationship with these marks is very complex. The european project Atrium - Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Managements wants to give careful attention to this “inconvenient heritage” of 11 countries of the South-east Europe, without any falsification.