Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Growth and Structure of Cities Faculty Research and Scholarship Growth and Structure of Cities 1997 Interpreting Nazi Architecture: e Case of Albert Speer Barbara Miller Lane Bryn Mawr College, [email protected]Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Follow this and additional works at: hp://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs Part of the Architecture Commons is paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. hp://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs/30 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Custom Citation Lane, B., "Interpreting Nazi Architecture: e Case of Albert Speer," in Ultra terminum vagari: scrii in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. Börje Magnusson, et al. Rome: Quasar, 1997. 155-169.
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Bryn Mawr CollegeScholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn MawrCollegeGrowth and Structure of Cities Faculty Researchand Scholarship Growth and Structure of Cities
1997
Interpreting Nazi Architecture: The Case of AlbertSpeerBarbara Miller LaneBryn Mawr College, [email protected]
Let us know how access to this document benefits you.
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs
Part of the Architecture Commons
This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cities_pubs/30
Custom CitationLane, B., "Interpreting Nazi Architecture: The Case of Albert Speer," in Ultra terminum vagari: scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. BörjeMagnusson, et al. Rome: Quasar, 1997. 155-169.
7. Heinrich Tessenow, Dalcroze School of the Dance, Dresden-Hellerau, 1910.
8. Albert Speer, Luitpoldarena, Nuremberg, c. 1934. Party Congress.
9. Albert Speer, Zeppelinfeld, Nuremberg, 1934-7. Party Congress with searchlights,
night.
10. Clemens Klotz, Ordensburg Vogelsang, Eiffel Mountains, 1934-39.
11. Hanns Dustmann, Hitler Youth Hostel, c. 1936.
12. Walther Andrae, reconstruction drawing of the Temple of Tukulti-Ninurta at
Assur, 1921.
BML/Speer/8/13/96
13. Albert Speer, Luitpoldhalle, Nuremberg, c. 1936.
14. Marcello Piacentini, Senate Building, University of Rome, 1935.
15. Erie County Jail, Buffalo, New York, c. 1938.
16. Municipal Building, Austin, Texas, c. 1938.
17. Paul Cret, Federal Reserve Board Building, Washington, D.C., 1932-34.
18. Mayday Ceremony, Berlin, Lustgarten, 1936. Night view.
19. Albert Speer, Zeppelinfeld, Nuremberg, 1934-37. Entry side.
20. Albert Speer, Zeppelinfeld, Nuremberg, 1934-7. Entrance.
SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1, 10, 11, 19
Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1968).
2
Lars Olof Larsson, personal photograph collection.
3,5
Library of Congress
4, 9, 18, 20
Albert Speer, Neue deutsche Baukunst (Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1941).
6
Bryn Mawr College, photograph collection.
7
Gustav Adolf Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (Berlin: Propyläen, 1927).
8
Emil Wernert, L'Art dans le IIIe Reich (Paris: Centre d'études de politique étrangère,
1936).
12
Werner Rittich, Architektur und Bauplastik der Gegenwart (Berlin: Rembrandt
Verlag, 1938).
13
Walther Andrae, Der jüngeren Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs,
1935).
15, 16
BML/Speer/8/13/96
0
Charles W. Short and Rudolph Stanley-Brown, Public Buildings: A Survey of
Architecture . . . completed between . . . 1933 and 1939 with the assistance of the Public
Works Administration (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939).
14, 17
Barbara Miller Lane, personal photograph collection.
iThis paper is a revised version of a talk given at the College Art Association Annual
Meeting at San Francisco, California, on February 16, 1989. My interpretation of Speer's
work, here and elsewhere, owes a great deal to conversations with Carl Nylander. iiAlbert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 31. First
published as Erinnerungen (Berlin: Ullstein, 1969). iii
Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship (New York: 1954). iv
Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (7th ed. Baltimore: Penguin,
1963), 411 (first ed. 1943). Exceptions to these generalizations were Hildegard Brenner's Die
Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1963); and Anna Teut's
Architektur im Dritten Reich 1933-1945 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1967). Yet Brenner did not provide
a comprehensive discussion of architecture as such, and Teut's volume, still very useful, is a
collection of source materials. My own work began to be published in 1968: Barbara Miller
Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1968; Italian ed., Rome, Officina Edizioni, 1973; rev. American ed.,
Harvard, 1985; German ed., Wiesbaden, Vieweg, 1986). I will return to my own
contributions below. vSpeer, Inside, 74-75. vi
Inside, 58; Erinnerungen, 71. vii
Inside, 56, 114-15, 154. viii
Inside, 11, 62; Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (New York: Macmillan,
1977), 3, 122 (first published as Spandauer Tagebücher, Berlin: Ullstein, 1975). ix
Inside, 59; Spandau, 477. xErinnerungen, 71-72; Inside, 58-59. See also Kurt Vondung, Magie und
Manipulation: Ideologischer Kult und politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 81-82. xi
Inside, 32-33, 59-60; Albert Speer, Technik und Macht, Adelbert Reif, ed.
(Esslingen am Neckar: 1979, ), 34-36.
BML/Speer/8/13/96
1
xii My discussion includes only a selection of the many recent works dealing with
Speer and Nazi architecture. Much of the debate up to 1985 is treated in the new preface to
my Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945 (rev. ed. 1985, German edition, 1986),
and in my biographical entry in The Dictionary of Art (London, forthcoming 1996). xiii
Albert Speer ed., with Karl Arndt, Georg Friedrich Koch and Lars Olof Larsson,
Albert Speer Architektur: Arbeiten 1933-1942 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1978). Among these essays,
Arndt's gives more prominence than the other two to the political role of Speer's architecture. xiv
Lars Olof Larsson, "Berlins planering," in Ordet i Sten [exh.cat., Swedish Museum
of Architecture] (Stockholm: Swedish Museum of Architecture, 1975), 3-21 (catalogue of an
exhibition at the Swedish Museum of Architecture); Lars Olof Larsson, Die Neugestaltung
der Reichshauptstadt (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978). xv
Leon Krier, "An Architecture of Desire," in Leon Krier ed., Albert Speer
Architecture 1932-1942 (Brussels: 1985), 217, 223. xvi
Leon Krier, "Vorwärts, Kameraden, Wir Müssen Züruck," Oppositions 24 (Spring
1981), 24; (NOTE: this is correctly cited) see also Leon Krier, "Krier on Speer,"
Architectural Review 173 (1983), 5-6 and Leon Krier, "An Architecture of Desire," AD 56
(1986), 30-37. xvii
Wolfgang Schäche, "Die Bedeutung der 'Berliner Neugestaltungsmassnahmen' für
die NS-Architekturproduktion," in Berthold Hinz, Hans-Ernst Mittig, Wolfgang Schäche, and
Angela Schönberger eds., Die Dekoration der Gewalt: Kunst und Medien im Faschismus
(Giessen: Anabas, 1979), 149-162; Angela Schönberger, "Die Neue Reichskanzlei in Berlin
von Albert Speer," Ibid., 163-172. Wolfgang Schäche, "Nationalsozialistische Architekten
und Antikenrezeption," in Wilhelm Arenhövel and Christian Schreiber ed., Berlin und die
Antike (Berlin: 1979), translated as "Nazi Architecture and its Approach to Antiquity," in AD
53 (1983), 81-88. Hans J. Reichhardt and Wolfgang Schäche, Von Berlin nach Germania:
über die Zerstörung der Reichshauptstadt durch Albert Speers Neugestaltungsplanungen
(Berlin: Landesarchiv, 1985). Angela Schönberger, Die Neue Reichskanzlei von Albert Speer
(Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1981). xviii
Vondung, Magie und Manipulation. Dieter Bartetzko, Illusionen in Stein:
Stimmungsarchitektur im deutschen Faschismus (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1985). Dieter Bartetzko,
Zwischen Zucht und Ekstase: zur Theatralik von NS-architektur (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1985). xix
Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: The End of a Myth (New York: St. Martin's,
1984), originally published as Albert Speer: Das Ende eines Mythos (Bern and Munich:
1982). On Speer's knowledge of the Final Solution, see especially Myth, 181-198. Schmidt
BML/Speer/8/13/96
2
and Schönberger's books are particularly notable in their thorough use of the most important
archival collections, such as the Bundesarchiv at Koblenz. xx
Hartmut Frank, "Welche Sprache sprechen Steine?" in Hartmut Frank ed.,
Faschistische Architekturen: Planen und Bauen in Europa, 1930 bis 1945 (Hamburg:
Hans Christians Verlag, 1985), 7-21; Hartmut Frank, "Auschwitz im Kopf: Die
architektonische Gestaltung eines Neubeginns," ms. of speech before the Hamburger
Architektenkammer, May, 1985, 15. xxi
Werner Durth, Deutsche Architekten: Biographische Verflechtungen
(Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1986). An emphasis on continuity has also inspired recent shows at
the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main. Two exhibitions have traced
continuities from the period before the First World War: one on "Reform and Tradition," and
one on "Expressionism and New Objectivity." A third, on the Nazi period itself, is planned.
See Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and Romana Schneider eds., Moderne Architektur in
Deutschland 1900 bis 1950, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, vol. 1:
Reform und Tradition, 1992; vol. 2: Expressionismus und neue Sachlichkeit (1994). xxii
Lane, Architecture and Politics. xxiii
Lane, Architecture and Politics, chapters 7 and 8. See also Barbara Miller Lane
(with Leila J. Rupp), Nazi Ideology before 1933: A Documentation (Austin, Texas:
University of Texas Press, 1978). xxiv
Lane, Architecture and Politics, chapter 8. xxv
Barbara Miller Lane, "Inside the Third Reich," Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 32 (December, 1973), 341-346; excerpts in Adelbert Reif ed., Albert
Speer: Kontroversen um ein deutsches Phänomen (Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1978), 343-
351. See also Barbara Miller Lane, "Architects in Power: Politics and Ideology in the Work
of Ernst May and Albert Speer," in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (summer 1986),
283-310, reprinted in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Raab eds., Art and History: Images
and their Meaning (Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
283-310. xxvi
Bruno Zevi, Towards an Organic Architecture (London: 1950). Lane, "Architects",
1986. Franco Borsi, The Monumental Era: European Architecture and Design, 1929-1939
(New York: Rizzoli, 1987). xxvii
My work differs from Borsi's in stressing the American buildings of the period. xxviii
Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1958; 3rd ed. 1969), chapter 24; David Watkin, A History of Western
Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1986), 522-524.
BML/Speer/8/13/96
3
xxix Albert Speer, "Die bauliche Gestaltung von Grosskundgebungen," in Wille und
Weg 1 (1933), 19-22; Rudolf Wolters, "Die Bauten des Dritten Reichs," Deutscher Wille:
Jahrbuch 1937 (Berlin: Wille und Weg, 1937), 138-48; Albert Speer ed., Die Kunst im
Deutschen Reich, Munich, 1937 ff., especially "Ausgabe B," Die Baukunst, 1939 ff; Albert
Speer ed., Neue Deutsche Baukunst (Berlin: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1941); and other
sources cited in Lane, Architecture and Politics, chapters 7 and 8.