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Reshaping Nazi Ruins 55 Years Later

NUREMBERG Germany (dpa) – At the place where once huge Nazi Party rallies were staged in the 1930s, teenage Germans today line up to slam tennis balls against a wall and rollerblade skaters weave intricate patterns in a corner of the mighty arena.

For decades, public officials have been in a quandary over what to do with the embarrassing former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, conceived by Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer. A triumphal Great Road 60 metres wide was specially constructed to lead up to them.

The Grandstand, which is still there today, was the stage for Speer’s “cathedral of lights” in 1936, when some 130 anti-aircraft searchlights sent dazzling beams eight kilometres into the sky.

They produced a glow so powerful it could be seen 200 kilometres away in Frankfurt.

But now, 55 years after the end of World War II, Nuremberg is finally coming to terms with the darkest chapter in its history.

On November 4, German President Johannes Rau, flanked by Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian state premier, and Ludwig Scholz, the city’s mayor, will open the Rally Grounds Documentation Centre on the huge site to the southeast of the city.

Ten million dollars has been raised for the visitor centre project in recent years. Franz Sonnenberger, the man in charge of Nuremberg’s nine municipal museums, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that it will be a gesture frankly addressing the “painful period in its history”.

It will be called “Fascination and Violence” – after an earlier, provisional summer exhibition arranged back in 1985 in Speer’s “Zeppelin Stand”. Speer modelled this on the Pergamum altar, a Greek monument that has been preserved in a Berlin museum, and it was spotlighted in filmmaker Leni Riefenstal’s movies eulogizing Nazism.

Sonnenberger, whose office is in a pre-Renaissance castle in Nuremberg, says more than 100,000 people visit Nuremberg every year, curious to see the rally grounds where Hitler gave histrionic, ranting speeches, and gave Nazi salutes to columns of goose-stepping troops assembled in his honour.

“There are museums, memorials and former concentration camp sites depicting the horror of the Nazi era, but up to now there has been no big exhibition in the place where the National Socialists actually celebrated themselves and their movement.

“So, we see this as a chance to create something new in Nuremberg, that will deal with the question of how and why it was possible the Nazi Party was so successful in persuading Germans their regime was the best thinkable in the 1930s.

“Up to now, we’ve had no place offering solid information for visitors,” says Sonnenberger who concedes, “Nuremberg conjures up memories of the ‘Third Reich’ like no other city.”

It is, after all, the city where the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed, robbing the Jews and later other minorities of their civil rights.

“It is also the city where the wildly anti-Semitic magazine ‘Der Stuermer’ was published; where the Nazi Party held its annual rallies, the regime’s propaganda spectacle; and where, ultimately, the victorious Allied Powers held the Nuremberg Trials to punish Nazi crimes.

“The city of Nuremberg is aware of the responsibility resulting from this history,” he writes in a museum catalogue, “and actively seeks to deal with its past.”

Remarkably, although large parts of Nuremberg lay in ruins at the end of World War II, the Nazi Party Rally Grounds escaped serious damage.

After the city’s military capture in April 1945, the U.S. Army staged a victory parade there, and celebrated by blowing up the huge swastika installed on the central grandstand.

The embarrassing site has since served a variety of purposes. May Day celebrations used to take place there, as did rock concerts and crowd-pulling motor-cycle and car-racing events on the Norisring circuit used the grandstand at their centre.

The United States military made use of its open spaces to park army vehicles. In 1967, the authorities had the dilapidated colonnade on the grandstand blown up, and later its side towers were reduced to half their original size.

But buildings on the Rally Grounds have been protected under the Historical Monuments Law since 1973. The ceiling mosaic in the entrance hall and the Zeppelin Grandstand staircases were restored in 1984, paving the way for a new use as an exhibition venue.

Sonnenberger says the idea of a permanent exhibition at the site has been favourably received both at home and abroad. “Every third tourist who visits Nuremberg comes from abroad, with most arriving from the United States, Britain, France, Holland and Japan,” he says.

The Nazis staged their party rallies in Nuremberg from 1933 to 1938. A huge building programme, aimed at providing a fitting backdrop for the events was launched and was never fully completed when Hitler went to war.

The outsized buildings remain today, vividly demonstrating the National Socialists’ megalomania and total claim to power.

Sonnenberger says the Documentation Centre project is aimed primarily at young people, offering a wealth of information about the history of National Socialism and the role intimidating architecture played in its evil ideology.

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