The Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally Grounds will be used more for educational work in the future. As the city of Nuremberg announced on Monday, construction work on the Zeppelinfeld learning and meeting place and the Zeppelin grandstand will begin in May. The city, the Free State of Bavaria and the federal government invested over 85 million euros for this. The Zeppelin Field and Zeppelin Grandstand are the only remaining components on the site that were completed and used during the Nazi era. By 2027, a didactic commentary will be created in the central section of the Zeppelin Grandstand.
The former Zehnteich train station will be set up as the first point of contact for visitors. Information and tickets will be available there in the future. The learning location is used and maintained by the Nazi Party Rally Grounds Documentation Center.
The Zeppelin Field and Zeppelin Grandstand are currently largely closed for safety reasons. No restoration is planned, just a structural preservation of the current condition. From 1933 to 1938, Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP staged its Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg. The spectacular, multi-day propaganda events were each attended by up to a million people.
Albert Speer received the order for gigantic assembly buildings and parade facilities, of which only parts were completed by the start of the war in 1939. Some, such as the Zeppelin Field and the unfinished Congress Hall, have been listed since 1973 as outstanding examples of National Socialist imperial architecture.
Mayor Julia Lehner (CSU) was pleased that construction work had now started after years of discourse and planning. “It is precisely such extracurricular learning places that are necessary to educate people about the ideology and inhumane ideas of the National Socialists,” she said. The Nazi Party Rally Grounds Documentation Center began operations in 2001 in the north wing of the Congress Hall. There is currently only an interim exhibition on display. The permanent exhibition is being redesigned and is scheduled to reopen in 2025.