Nuremberg: floating grove before world history – Bavaria

These days in “Cube 600” on Fürther Strasse, on the forecourt of the Nuremberg Trials Memorial, the Exhibition “Right-Wing Terrorism. Conspiracy and Self-Empowerment – 1945 to the Present” to see. One will not leave her without a shocked shudder. Of course, the murderous activities of the NSU, the attack in Halle, the murder of Walter Lübcke, you all know it. But who could say anything more specific about the foiled SS assassination attempt on the Nuremberg trials? Or about the right-wing terrorist Helmut Oxner, who murdered three people he did not know in 1982 in the center of Nuremberg?

On the one hand, the location for this exhibition at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice and directly in front of the building in which the historic room 600 is housed was perfectly chosen. In the first exhibition room, for example, in which it is documented how former SS men tried to attack the trial of Nazi war criminals in 1946, in that room you look through the window directly at the justice building in which this terrorist act, which luckily was foiled, was supposed to take place. Historical exhibition content could hardly be presented more authentically.

The “Cube 600” is a former car workshop – and is temporarily used for exhibitions.

(Photo: Nuremberg City Museums/matthaeus photographer)

On the other hand, the exhibition in the “Cube 600” is also daring. In the last room, attacks are documented, from which relatives, friends and acquaintances of the victims are still suffering today. The arson attack in Schwandorf in 1988, for example, which cost the lives of four people. Or the anti-Semitic double murder in Erlangen in 1980, to which the German Rabbi Shlomo Lewin and his partner Frida Poeschke fell victim. These deeds are remembered in an exhibition space whose ephemeral workshop aesthetic is certainly well suited for contemporary artefacts. But it can seem too laconic to relatives.

Nuremberg: While the trial of the main Nazi war criminals was taking place in Room 600 on the second floor, military vehicles were parked in front of the building.

While the trial of the main Nazi war criminals was taking place in Room 600 on the second floor, military vehicles were parked in front of the building.

(Photo: National Archives, College Park, MD, USA)

In fact, for many decades this white cube in the square in front of Room 600 was a workshop, specifically an auto repair shop (“pitstop”), which made a curious impression at best on the area in front of the Nuremberg Trials Memorial – a prime destination for international tourists. Before the Second World War, the two-storey inn “Bräuhäusl” stood between Fürther Strasse and the east wing of the Palace of Justice, the ruins of which were demolished after 1945 after the Allies decided to try Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg.

The square in front of the court building was then initially used as a parking lot. Later, garages and the building of a car repair shop were built there, which can be regarded as unmistakable proof that many things could have been imagined in Nuremberg in the post-war years. Certainly not that Hall 600 could one day become a hotspot for international tourists – and certainly not the main content of an application for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In Room 600, only two original wooden benches survived the 1960s: when the court got the room back from the Allies, it first cleaned it up thoroughly – and destroyed the historical furniture.

It is now clear that Nuremberg is applying for the World Heritage title with the Palace of Justice, including the Memorium and Room 600, as a birthplace of international criminal law. In 2021, the city and Free State sent the application documents to the Conference of Ministers of Education. Around the same time, the “Cube 600” opened after the city negotiated with the former Pitstop owner over the property. Of course, these exhibition rooms are only intended for temporary use. In the longer term, the city has very different plans for the square. After being used as an inn, military car park, car repair shop and exhibition, the area in front of the east wing of the Palace of Justice is to be the site of the visitor center for the Nuremberg Trials Memorium in the not too distant future. Time will tell exactly when and by what means this will be the case, says Nuremberg’s building officer Daniel Ulrich.

For the time being, the city has a winning design in an “ideas and realization competition”. The jury unanimously chose a design by the Hamburg office Benter Architektur, which worked together with the Berlin landscape architect Henningsen for its work. The clear and austere structure, the jury appreciated, keeps the view from Fürther Strasse to the listed Palace of Justice largely unobstructed and thus does justice to the historic site without the new building pushing itself into the foreground – albeit the “unusual gesture” of one “Floating grove of trees” on the roof definitely represents “an architectural form of expression that is appropriate in its ambiguity for this special task”.

The new building will accommodate the foyer, cash desk, seminar rooms and catering of the memorium. Overall, the city hopes that this redesign will create a place that “does justice to the world-historical and museum significance of the urban space”. Nobody in Nuremberg says that the Conference of Ministers of Education or even Unesco should be impressed by these site plans. Of course, the city should be hoping for a tiny piece of the jigsaw on the way to a possibly successful application as a world heritage site.

Eight years ago, Nuremberg and the Free State failed in a first attempt to have the world-famous courtroom included on the federal government’s list of proposals for UNESCO. According to city documents, “depending” on the application process, a “free accessible area” is now to be set up in the new visitor center. Information would be given there about the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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