Gauforum

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Gauforen should symbolize the centers of power in the Third Reich in the cities . Gigantically conceived, they illustrated the centralization of the leadership state . The forum combined the administration building and the parade ground in the square . The Gauleitung, the NSDAP and other administrative institutions resided here . Gauforen emerged from 1937 as part of a large-scale building program in all Gau capitals in order to manifest the importance of the party and the National Socialist movement through a party and administrative center. The intention was to place the closed complex, consisting of the Hall of the People, Gauhaus, bell tower and square, as a new center opposite the historic city center .

Planned Gaufforums

Bayreuth Gauforum

An extensive forum was planned with a building for the Gau leadership, a Gauhalle for 10,000 people, a city theater and a Gausport field. A large park and a lake were to be created on the edge of the forum. In part, the demolition work on the previous development has already started. Some work on the Gausport field was also started. However, almost all of the true-to-scale models are still available (some of them can be seen in the historical museum of the city of Bayreuth). In addition, Hitler wanted the Bayreuth Festival Hall on the Green Hill to be converted into a huge facility, where Richard Wagner's old Festival Hall would only have been preserved for a shadowy existence for historical performances.

Gauforum Dresden

An ideas competition was held as early as 1934/35, in which 277 works were submitted. First prizes went to the Stuttgart architect AM Schmidt as well as Herbert Terpitz and Müller-Moreitz (Leipzig). The Dresden city planning officer Paul Wolf proposed the city-owned land around the Ilgenkampfbahn and the Arnholdbad . Wilhelm Kreis , the builder of the Dresden German Hygiene Museum (1927-30), played a key role in the later detailed planning .

The competition was initially just a project. The implementation was delayed for various reasons, finally in 1936 Hitler commissioned Wilhelm Kreis to build the Gauforum. Wilhelm Kreis, who had also taken part in the competition, albeit unsuccessfully, relied on the ideas and plans that already existed: around the Adolf-Hitler-Platz , which was to be newly built on Güntzwiesen, a Gauhaus (210 × 190 Meters), a Sachsenhalle (140 × 220 meters) to the south-west, two temples of honor to the east, as well as colonnades and a 70-meter high watchtower. The 75,000 m² parade ground should offer space for 200,000 people. A newly built, very representative street as a continuation of the Herkulesallee was supposed to connect this new political city center with the released town hall. Due to economic bottlenecks during the war, however, the foundation stone was laid for the Gauhaus.

Gauforum Hamburg

After the architect Konstanty Gutschow , in whose office the later Hanoverian city planning director Rudolf Hillebrecht worked, was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to redesign Hamburg in 1939 , he designed a 65-meter-wide and two-kilometer-long elevated road for the Hamburg Elbe bank , for which the classicist palmaille by the Danish architect Christian Frederik Hansen was to be demolished. After the overhead road was narrowed by two new 60-meter-high buildings, a 250-meter-high Gau skyscraper was to be built behind a 150-meter-wide and 500-meter-long parade ground . For this purpose, the Altona town hall built in the 19th century should be demolished beforehand. The Second World War prevented the realization of this gigantic building project, which was “in no way inferior to Albert Speer's plans ”.

Gauforum Hannover

→ Main article see Gauforum (Hannover)

From the end of the 1930s, three so-called forums were planned in the immediate vicinity of the Maschsee , which was to be expanded from around 75 to 140 hectares for this purpose: the State Forum with the Reich Governor on Rudolf-von-Bennigsen-Ufer , the “Municipal Forum” opposite New Town Hall and the Gauforum for the Nazi party, which was originally supposed to be built on Waterlooplatz . After the planning work was discontinued in 1942, only the foundations for a spectator stand planned to the west of the Maschsee were realized, the concrete masses of which under the pile of rubble, which was later piled up, served as the basis for the Lower Saxony Stadium.

Gauforum Weimar

→ Main article see Gauforum Weimar

Former Gauforum Weimar, today Thuringian State Administration Office

The Gauforum Weimar in Thuringia was the only one of the planned forums to be built and has largely been preserved. The plant covers an area of ​​approximately 40,000 square meters. Of the five planned complexes, three could be completed between 1937 and the end of the Second World War. Today these are mostly used by the Thuringian State Administration Office .

A fourth, the hall construction that was only completed after the war, has housed a larger shopping center, the Weimar Atrium , a branch of the municipal tourist information, as well as a bus parking lot and a 3D cinema since the end of 2005 .

literature

  • Christiane Wolf: Gauforen - centers of power. On National Socialist architecture and urban planning. At the same time: Dissertation in 1999 at the University of Bochum. Verlag Bauwesen, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-345-00694-4 ; Table of contents as a PDF document

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Friedrich Lindau : Planning and building in the fifties in Hanover. Schlütersche, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-87706-530-9 , here: p. 24f .; online through google books
  2. ↑ Klaus Mlynek : Hanover and the building guild of the Third Reich , in History of the City of Hanover , Vol. 2, From the beginning of the 19th century to the present , ed. by Klaus Mlynek and Waldemar R. Röhrbein , with the collaboration of Dieter Brosius , Carl-Hans Hauptmeyer , Siegfried Müller and Helmut Plath , Schlütersche , Hannover 1994, ISBN 3-87706-364-0 , p. 516f. and picture credits , p. 885; online through google books
  3. ↑ http://kerstinthieler.de/wp-content/uploads/Kerstin-Thieler_GauhauptstadtOL.jpg
  4. ^ Niels Gutschow: Ordnungswahn. Birkhäuser, 2001, ISBN 978-3-035-60254-8 , p. 166 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  5. ↑ Salzburg's festival halls that were never built. In: salzburg.orf.at. July 26, 2020, accessed July 25, 2020 .
  6. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Gauforum. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 205f.