German Stadium (Nuremberg)

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The "German Stadium" should be on "Große Straße", between the congress hall and the March field.

The German Stadium was designed by Albert Speer for the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg . The horseshoe-shaped arena was to be built as the " largest stadium in the world " halfway up the southwest of Große Straße and was intended, among other things, to host National Socialist fighting games and the Olympic Games .

However, the construction of the structure did not go beyond digging the construction pit. The only visible relics are the Silbersee and the Silberbuck, which complement the Volkspark Dutzendteich recreational area .

history

Architectural design

As Speer himself said, the design was not inspired by the Circus Maximus , but by the Panathinaiko Stadium , which had made a great impression on him when he visited Athens in 1935. Speer's stadium in Nuremberg was planned as a gigantic enlargement of the Greco-Roman model, from which he took the horseshoe design and the Propylaea , but converted into a raised structure built on pillars with a large columned courtyard that joins the open end of the stadium Inner courtyard with pillars.

The plans for the stadium in Nuremberg could not fall back on a location at the bottom of a ravine , as with the Panathinaiko stadium in Athens , but had to be aligned on a flat piece of land (24 hectares). That is why its five tiers for 400,000 spectators should have been supported in the usual Roman way by massive barrel vaults. Pink granite blocks were intended for the outer facade, which would have risen to a height of about 90 meters: a series of 65-meter-high arches were to rest on a substructure made of dark red granite.

The archway and the pedestal again indicate a Roman roundabout or stadium and not a Greek one, which according to tradition did not necessarily rest on a substructure. In order to bring a large number of spectators to their rows quickly, express elevators should be installed that carry 100 spectators at the same time to the seats in the upper three tiers. The short transverse center line of the stadium culminated at each of its ends in the large grandstand for the guide, the guests of honor and the press. Once again, the Roman construction served as a model.

Speer apparently chose a horseshoe shape for his building after rejecting the oval shape of an amphitheater . The last-mentioned plan, according to Speer, would have intensified the heat and caused a psychological disadvantage - a comment he did not elaborate on. When Speer mentioned the enormous cost of the structure, Hitler , who laid the foundation stone on September 9, 1937 , replied that it would cost less than two Bismarck- class battleships to build .

Wolfgang Lotz, who wrote about the German Stadium in 1937 , commented that it would hold twice the number of spectators that would have found space in the Circus Maximus in Rome. Inevitably at that time, he also highlighted the sense of community that such a building would create between competitors and spectators:

“As in ancient Greece, the elite and highly experienced men chosen from the mass of the nation will compete against each other. An entire nation in compassionate astonishment sits in the ranks. Spectators and competition participants merge into one unit. "

The idea of ​​holding Pan-Germanic athletics competitions here may have been inspired by the Panathenaic Mountains, but Speer's stadium was stylistically more indebted to ancient Rome than to the Greeks; With its huge vault-supported substructure and the open outer facade in the archway, it was more similar to the Circus Maximus than the style of the Athens Panathinaic Stadium. Once again, a Nazi building represented a mixture of Greek and Roman elements, with a predominance of Roman elements.

But Hitler didn't want such a stadium primarily to serve as a hub for German athletics. The restored Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens had been used for the 1896 Olympic Games and the 1906 Special Olympic Games . In 1936 the games were held at the Reichssportfeld in Berlin, but Hitler insisted that after 1940, when the Tokyo games were scheduled, all future games should be held at the German Stadium . This stadium was in all dimensions far larger than the Berlin Olympic Stadium , which had a capacity of 115,000 spectators. Hitler's assumption is beyond doubt that after his victory in World War II, the conquered world would have had no choice but to send all athletes to Germany every four years for the Olympic Games . Pan-Germanic games were to be synonymous with a worldwide competition in which the winners would have received their rewards from the leader , surrounded by the faithful of the party , who were to be bedded on cushions reminiscent of ancient gods in the straight transverse axis of the stadium . As a result, this stadium design in Nuremberg foreshadowed Hitler's desire for world domination (like the Volkshalle, Berlin ) long before this goal was put into words.

Trial grandstand system

Albert Speer (3rd from left) and Adolf Hitler on a visit to the test stand. (March 1938)

In order to test the optimal arrangement of the rows, a slope was started on September 9, 1937 near the village of Oberklausen in the Hirschbachtal on the Hohe Berg ( 49 ° 34 ′ 3.2 ″  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 26.9 ″  E ) Full-scale model of a row of seats in the German Stadium. It consisted of five tiers, which were carried out with different angles of inclination in order to determine the optimal visibility.

Concrete foundations of the stadium model on a slope near Oberklausen.

This model consisted of concrete blocks on which wooden structures with the tiers stood. After 1945 the wooden superstructures were removed. The concrete foundations still exist today. They have been under monument protection since 2002.

Construction pit

Start of construction - construction stop

The foundation stone for the huge arena was laid by Hitler on September 9, 1937. Completion was planned for 1945.

The excavation work for the horseshoe-shaped excavation began in 1938 and stopped a year later. In 1939 the construction pit in the northeast end of the "horseshoe" was largely completed with a depth of ten meters, while in the curve in the southwest there was still an entrance ramp for trucks and thus a shallower excavation depth. Railway tracks, unloading stations and supply buildings were built around the excavation for the foundation. Immediately to the east of the excavation pit, a large pedestrian tunnel was created under the "Große Straße", which was filled in in the post-war years.

Silver lake

Due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the construction project did not go far beyond the excavation of the excavation pit and the preparation of the building site. The foundation walls in the eastern part, which were already built with red bricks, were exposed during the construction of the exhibition car park and built over with the car park. The groundwater in the excavation pit, which is very close to the surface in the entire Dutzendteich area, required groundwater maintenance by means of pump systems during the war years up to the beginning of 1945, which was discontinued at the end of the war. The huge excavation of the foundation was then filled with groundwater. The Silbersee was created as the sixth and youngest body of water in the Dutzendteich area.

Silberbuck

Silberbuck

In the post-war years, the central Nuremberg rubble dump was set up in the former excavation pit, which has now become a large, horseshoe-shaped lake.

The filling in the south-western part of the excavation began in 1946 with unused building materials for the Nazi party rally grounds as well as approx. 10 million tons of rubble from the 90% destroyed old town of Nuremberg. For this purpose, a narrow-gauge rubble railway, the so-called Moll Railway, was built, which, after the reception capacity was exhausted, continued to Fischbach . In the following years, the responsible authorities of the city of Nuremberg, private individuals and industrial companies dumped large amounts of household waste and, in some cases, critical chemical, toxic and industrial waste from 1946 to the end of 1962 without any safety or sealing measures. According to current estimates, the majority of these materials are hazardous waste . As a result of the lack of sealing, the Silberbuck is connected to the Silver Lake via the local groundwater and is the cause of the occurrence of toxic hydrogen sulfide there. Landfill remediation is not yet planned for cost reasons.

Level compensation with the natural surface of the terrain was achieved in 1951. Then the high landfill began to be built, which was operated until 1962. Parallel to the ongoing landfill measures, work began as early as 1955 to cover part of the landfill with an approximately 0.5 m thick layer of humus and to green it with the help of school classes. After the landfill was closed, the resulting hill was completely greened and reforested.

The today 35 m high panoramic mountain (approx. 356 m above sea level) is the highest point of the Volkspark Dutzendteich and was officially named Silberbuck in 1970 .

literature

  • Léon Krier (Ed.): Albert Speer. Architecture. 1932-1942. Archives d'Architecture Moderne, Brussels 1985, ISBN 2-87143-006-3 .
  • Wolfgang Lotz: The “German Stadium” for Nuremberg. In: Modern designs. Vol. 36, 1937, ISSN  0931-4806 , pp. 489-496.
  • Alex Scobie: Hitler's State Architecture. The Impact of Classical Antiquity. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA, etc. a. 1990, ISBN 0-271-00691-9 ( Monographs on the Fine Arts 45).
  • Albert Speer: architecture. Works 1933–1942. Propylaea, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-549-05446-7 .
  • Albert Speer: Memories . Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH & Co. KG, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1996, ISBN 3-550-07616-9 .
  • Jochen Thies : Architect of world domination. Hitler's “final goals”. Droste, Düsseldorf 1976, ISBN 3-7700-0425-6 (At the same time: Freiburg i.Br., Univ., Diss., 1975), (Unchanged reprint. Athenaeum et al., Königstein / Taunus et al. 1980, ISBN 3-7610-7235 -X ( Athenaeum Droste Pocket Books. History 7238)).
  • Franz-Joachim Verspohl : Stadium buildings from antiquity to the present. Direction and self-awareness of the masses. Anabas-Verlag, Giessen 1976, ISBN 3-87038-043-8 (At the same time: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 1974: Stadiums, the arena in the social field of tension from antiquity to the present ).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Speer's memoirs, page 75
  2. ↑ See Krier, Albert Speer, pp. 176-185
  3. ↑ See Speer, Architecture, page 18
  4. ↑ See Scobie, 78
  5. ↑ See Speer's Memoirs , p. 8
  6. ↑ See Lotz, pp. 491-492
  7. ↑ See Scobie, 80
  8. ↑ See Verspohl, page 163
  9. ↑ See Speer's Memoirs , p. 84; Thies, World Domination, 91
  10. ↑ See Lotz, p. 493
  11. ↑ See Scobie, 80
  12. ^ Information system on the Nazi party rally grounds: Silberbuck
  13. ^ Nürnberger Nachrichten: June 13, 2012: The Silbersee remains dangerous

Coordinates: 49 ° 25 ′ 19 ″  N , 11 ° 6 ′ 39 ″  E