From the year 2021, December 15th will be included in Nuremberg’s city chronicle. Just the fact that the city council had to move to the Meistersingerhalle due to the pandemic would be worth a note. Usually one meets in the council chamber, in special situations in the historic town hall, meetings in the outside box-shaped, inside imposingly spacious hall would have been taken for a joke up to now. And as if that weren’t enough, dozens of singers from the State Theater gathered at the entrance to the hall, held balloons, sang from “Carmen” and made a relaxed impression. After all – one more footnote for the chronicle – the heads of the three big city council factions had already announced on local radio days before the decisive meeting that they had agreed on a common path on a groundbreaking question: The opera will be the same for about ten years in 2025 Move the Nazi party rally grounds.
But afterwards, also a groundbreaking decision, to return to the city center. There the opera house, which opened in 1905, is being completely renovated. What sounds self-evident was by no means undisputed. After all, according to rough estimates, costs of half a billion euros are likely to be incurred by the public sector for the entire project. But this major debate was overshadowed by the even greater debate about the location of the interim. In the end, the CSU, SPD and Greens agreed on the direction of the move – the Nazi congress hall that remained on the torso. Also about the fact that the backstage area will be relocated to Hitler’s hall during the interim, after which it will be used by artists. The decision, of course, whether the venue will be built in the courtyard of the horseshoe-like Nazi building or in front of it, was postponed. It will be included in the Chronicle in 2022.