Nuremberg’s parties are in a clinch over Hitler’s indoor torso. – Culture

Of the Forward suspected it early on. The SPD newspaper from exile in Prague in 1935 blasphemed the construction of the megalomaniac “congress building” of the National Socialists, saying that the building was built thanks to “the Fuehrer’s initiative and congenial inspiration”. The fact that Adolf Hitler condescended to lay the foundation stone for the monster himself (275 times 265 floor space, including the area around 82,000 square meters) on September 11, 1935, entitles him to “all possible shivers of respect”. Especially since it was possible to hear from “the very highest mouth” of a construction period of eight years – what she said about the Forward find funny 1935, after all, it documents a “very optimistic calculation about the continued viability of the National Socialist Party”. Only: “But if the Third Reich collapses beforehand, what will happen to the Congress Hall?”

A downright prophetic question at the time. In 1939, shortly after the start of the war, work on the building was stopped. From the planned height of 70 meters, the 1,400 workers, who had already filled tens of millions of bricks, had piled up barely 40 meters. What will become of the already highly dystopian area, this question has basically been asked in Nuremberg since 1945 – but never before has it been so fiercely contested as these days. In the city, the CSU and the SPD have always maintained a robust cooperation, sometimes one is the mayor, sometimes the other, the CSU is currently in power, but the town hall alliance of both parties remains, whatever may come. At the moment, however, some fear that this covenant will be broken. To blame: Hitler and his hall – the torso remained because the fundamental Reich perished before completion.

Hitler wanted the “Mastersingers” to be included in the choreography of the Nazi party rally directors

What’s going on in Nuremberg? The current dispute begins in the opera house near the old town of Nuremberg, and there, too, one comes to the man she is with Forward “Herr Hitler” called, do not avoid it. Hitler wanted the “Mastersingers” to be integrated into the choreography of the party rally directors and devised a “deconstructed” opera house for this purpose: Away with the playful Art Nouveau, which had made the house a city landmark since 1905. And it had to happen quickly, after all, the 1935 NSDAP party congress was supposed to begin with Richard Wagner, so there were only six months left for an Art Nouveau cleansing. The result? Optically relatively and acoustically completely underground. In 1935 Hitler visits the construction site – and the desperate Goebbels is already making notes in his diary: “I meet the Führer while the opera house is being renovated. He is very unhappy.”

The built-in “Führerloge” was shamefully removed after the war. The fact that the “entire renovation” of the house was acoustically “screwed up” – as opera friend Goebbels said – did not change much. In the Nuremberg Opera House you can still meet high-ranking employees who openly complain that there is “practically no listening pleasure from the tenth row onwards”. Adolf Hitler also left this legacy to the city.

The 650 house employees of the opera only recently pointed out the urgency to be able to leave the house in the direction of an alternative venue soon. The fact that this was politically “dragged off for decades” – the opera people couldn’t help it, as they rightly emphasize. Workplace ordinance, occupational health and safety law, fire and noise protection, nothing more corresponds to applicable regulations. The opera is to be closed in 2025. What to do with the company then?

The CSU and SPD still agree that the idea of ​​a spontaneous troop from the city council – called “political gang” – is not capable of reaching a consensus: The gang wants the opera to move forever to the Nazi party rally grounds and use the opera house screwed up by the Nazis in a different way , just not for opera anymore. The bottom line is that it would be cheaper, she argues, but it hardly gets any applause. Also hardly capable of reaching a consensus: demolishing the old opera house and building a new one, a thought for which the Greens express sympathy. You recently “took note” that a first serious cost estimate estimated around 600 million euros for an alternative venue including an existing opera house renovation.

The Greens deduce from this that one should “possibly” also turn to the “vision of a structurally and culturally unique” new opera building: “Transparent, with the most modern, highly functional architecture, inviting, barrier-free – it would be a great success!” But maybe the opera, after all, a listed building from the early 20th century, one of the few that remained in the city of the Nazi party rallies after 1945? For the time being, the response is manageable.

It is therefore foreseeable that the opera house on the outskirts of the old town will probably be renovated and that the ensemble will return there after a period in exile – up to ten years.

“Wagner and Hitler reunited again?” Hans-Christian Täubrich says: “Keep your hands off it.”

The direction of the move is also somewhat capable of consensus. After all kinds of brownfield sites were examined, a majority of the city council is now calling for a move to the south of the city: to the former Nazi party rally grounds. Most also speak out in favor of artists and cultural workers doing their work there in the interior of the congress hall torso (i.e. in the endless corridors and rooms). And even about the fact that entire opera house departments – mask, scenery, fund, administration – are being relocated inside the horseshoe-like building, a city council majority is within reach.

Nuremberg’s party dispute is now escalating to the purportedly detailed question of whether the previously deliberately deserted inner courtyard of the Nazi semicircle may be equipped with an ephemeral opera performance hall – or not. The SPD has specially convened a party committee, including a resolution. Result: A number of locations at the Nazi congress hall could be checked. The inner courtyard in particular is “not just any building plot”, rather “a place of remembrance” – and so this place has to remain unchanged. Historians from the Nazi Documentation Center at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds see it that way too. At the thought of meeting an audience holding champagne glasses in front of a 39-meter-high Nazi facade at the anniversary celebration and Sunday matinee, “the hair on the back of my neck bristles,” says the founding director of the Documentation Center, Hans-Christian Täubrich. Furthermore: “Wagner and Hitler reunited again?” He could only say: “Keep your hands off it.”

Open detailed view

The CSU is different. Transforming oneself into Nazi non-places in the sense of “a free, democratic and open society” has long been a model of success, oppose Mayor Marcus König and his deputy, Nuremberg’s Mayor of Culture Julia Lehner (see our interview with Lehner and the publicist Rachel Salamander). Only one kilometer away from the congress hall, the city has long since transformed the “Führerheim” of a former SS barracks into a house for contemporary culture. And the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra has been at home in the head of the Nazi hall torso for years. So why not in the Nazi courtyard? The CSU is now supported by the employees of the opera. They advocate “a responsible cultural use of the congress hall” – especially since none of the tested interim locations is even “nearly as suitable” as the congress hall.

The exit is open. In the end, it is possible that the Greens, who are in the opposition in Nuremberg, will decide in the end – but in the federal government they will at least have the new Minister of State for Culture, Claudia Roth. When it comes to the opera-house-in-the-Nazi courtyard, they have clearly leaned towards the CSU so far. Only: If the CSU and the Greens voted together against the SPD on this fundamental issue, it would probably break Nuremberg’s hitherto indestructible black-red alliance.