On September 11, 1935, in Nuremberg, on the shores of Lake Dutzendteich, Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone of the Congress Hall in front of six thousand people. This monumental building, which Hitler himself called "colossus", was supposed to accommodate 50 thousand people during the congresses of the NSDAP and other mass gatherings. The project, however, was not destined to be completed: construction was stopped when the hall was slightly more than half ready.
The largest surviving building of the Third Reich really reached colossal dimensions: 275 x 265 meters with a courtyard of 180 x 160 meters. The first stages of the project were carried out by the architect Ludwig Ruff, and when he died in 1934, his son, Franz Ruff, took over the project management.
In order to emphasize the scale of the conventions taking place in the hall, Ludwig Ruff, in consultation with Hitler, developed a concept based on the techniques of theater architecture. The design of the facade reminded of the Colosseum in Rome, only, perhaps, here the architectural language of power manifested itself more strongly. Smooth granite cladding, rows of "blind" windows (today they are glazed), arcades - all these elements were supposed to show the power of the National Socialist Party. By the way, Hitler personally selected granite from catalogs provided by Ruff's studio, and the stone was delivered from 80 regions of Germany.
Initially, the construction cost was estimated at 42 million Reichsmarks, but in 1935 the planned budget reached 60-70 million. However, costs continued to rise, and as a result, the building's shell alone cost more than $ 70 million. The construction employed 1,400 workers. The companies working on the project had to attract people from all over Germany to create additional jobs.
In order to check the visual impression of this monumental building, some of its parts were made in the form of scale models of 1: 1. So, for example, in 1937 a huge wooden model of the facade section was built; she stood at the construction site until the start of the war.
During the war, as a result of the numerous bombings to which Nuremberg was subjected, the unfinished building was significantly destroyed. In 1943–1944, most of the openings there were filled with bricks, and some of the premises were used as an armament warehouse. Huge spaces were allocated to the "Engineering Works Augsburg-Nuremberg" (now known as MAN) with 900 workers. A hospital was set up in 2 large rooms on the first floor.
After 1945, the Congress Hall became the property of the city authorities and was named the Round Exhibition Building, since it was not politically correct to call it the Congress Hall. In 1949, the German Building Exhibition was held there, organized by the Nuremberg Reconstruction Committee to restore the city's reputation, which suffered from its close ties with the Nazi regime. Variants of possible new use of the ex-Congress Hall were considered - as a football stadium, exhibition center, cinema, nursing home. But all these ideas did not lead to anything, since they did not take into account the huge scale of the building and the potential costs of its reconstruction and operation. So in 1969, the city authorities decided to leave everything as it is and pragmatically rent out some of the premises to private companies. In 1987, a new idea arose - to turn the hall into a shopping center, but it was immediately rejected by the Bavarian Heritage Agency, as "… the project did not correspond to the character of the monument." Discussions continued until 1998, when the Department of Culture organized a symposium "Heritage: How to Deal with Nazi Architecture", where it was decided that it should be used "routinely", but at the same time provided with complete information about its past and so serve as educational material for future generations. …
So in the same 1998, the city museum association and the authorities of Nuremberg announced a competition for a project for the reconstruction of the northern wing of the Congress Hall under
Center for Archival Documentation of the Nazi Party. The task included not only the actual development of the project, but also the solution of the question of how to deal with Nazi architecture and its "spirit". The Austrian architect Gunther Domenig, a professor of architecture from Graz, won the competition.
He himself faced the Nazi regime as a child, so the task was unusual and extremely difficult for him. Domenig wrote: “The Museum of Archival Documentation of the Nazi Party is a memorial in the full sense of the word. An elementary building demonstrates its power in an incredible way. The exhibition halls of the Museum of Archival Documentation … directly show fascist architecture. An important and permanent element of such an architecture is its symmetry. There is not a single, even the smallest element in the halls that does not demonstrate ideology. So to destroy this historical axis and thus deal with the past seems to me an obvious decision. I pushed the existing symmetry and the ideology behind it against new lines. To overcome the heaviness of concrete, brick and granite, I turned to lighter materials: glass, steel and aluminum. The historical walls remained unchanged and were not touched by the new project anywhere”.
Gunther Domenig's position was particularly evident in the northwest corner of the building. The granite façade has been carefully "opened" from top to bottom to create the main entrance to the museum. The staircase leads to the area where the lobby, offices, glass elevators, cafes, cinema and lecture hall are located, and then continues to the level of the bridge leading to the exhibitions of the archive center.
The implementation of the project has become a difficult task not only for the architect, but also for all specialists involved in the reconstruction. In the course of the design, it became clear that the documents for the Congress Hall indicated the wrong dimensions, and all the premises had to be re-measured. All work on the slightest design changes had to be performed with extreme caution due to the fragility of the materials.
The most significant new element proposed by Domenig was the glass "cut" - a corridor 2 meters wide and 130 meters long, running diagonally across the north wing. At the end of the viewing of the exposition, visitors come to the beginning of this corridor, and they have a view of the courtyard: from this point of view, the huge building looks more like a pile of bricks. On the way back to the lobby, visitors all follow the same corridor; at the same time, they open up unusual prospects for the Congress Hall.
The architect succeeded, with the exception of minor (and necessary) technical improvements, almost nowhere to touch the existing structure of the building. Domenig admitted that in no case wanted to touch architecture with such a terrible past, and, moreover, in any way to complete it.
The permanent exhibition of the archives center is called "Charm and Horror" and tells about the terrible times and monstrous deeds of the Nazis. Here are a variety of documents, photo and video materials that reveal in detail the events of those years. The exhibition has been made as interactive as possible in order to be understandable for tourists from abroad who do not know the German language.
In the courtyard of the archival and documentation center, there is a parking lot for cars, and the part of the Congress Hall, not used by the museum, is given over to the garage of the German analogue of the Ministry of Emergencies. The congress hall is still striking in its scale even in its present, badly dilapidated form. But, nevertheless, it seems very true that Domenig, in his words, "… pierced fascist architecture with a glass spear."
